


Only Skin.

by quondam



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:18:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quondam/pseuds/quondam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the final assault of the Cronos Station, Shepard discovers what she always feared the most: that she wasn't just a reconstruction, but a clone of the original Commander Shepard. She and those close to her must come to their own terms with what this revelation means to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Like an animal, Shepard had the taste for blood in her mouth as they made their way through Cronos station. Whether it was Kai Leng or just the poor soul who emptied the litter bins they encountered next, there was a heat sink, primed and ready, with their name on it. But for all the adrenaline pumping through her veins, there was nothing to be done when encountered with locked doors impeding their way.

"Shepard, that console has not been fully scrubbed. It contains data you might find interesting." EDI chimed in as she began to override the door, and Shepard, with all her impatience, turned to the console.

She considered not bothering with whatever ones and zeros were encoded on the system, not because she wasn't interested, but because Shepard wasn't certain she could take on yet another weight with everything else riding on her and on them. Kaidan shifted his weight in the corner of her eye and taking a deep breath, Shepard decided that she would be able to handle whatever vile and disgusting thing was on there, so long as she wasn't alone.

"What am I seeing here?"

"Project Lazarus."

The video played and the only recognizable figure was that of the Illusive Man. _Clinically brain-dead_ , the other one said. _Can't overcome nature._ She swallowed over the dryness in her throat, and even though she couldn't make out the words with all the white noise in her ears, she could at least tell from his tone that Kaidan offered words of comfort. Shepard pressed on, and started the second log.

"Tissue generation is proceeding. The helmet kept Shepard's brain intact…" In the pit of her stomach a growing uneasiness started to spread, the kind of instinct cultivated over thirty-two years and that had long foreshadowed all the things in her life that had gone wrong. She'd felt it that morning on Mindoir. An hour before things had gone to hell on Akuze. Suiting up as they sat down on Eden Prime. It had even eaten away at her as she and Kaidan once more broke every frat reg in the quiet of her cabin the night she died near Alchera. Something, somewhere, was about to go horribly wrong.

"Project Lazarus is reporting neurological function," the unknown man continued. "They're requesting additional funding to begin the imprint from the brain tissue salvaged from Shepard."

There was some prattling about a team, about the plans Cerberus had with their pet project, but Shepard heard none of it. Nausea simultaneously seized her gut and her throat, a sweat instantly at her brow. Her head whipped towards EDI, needing some kind of confirmation to what she'd heard. For a moment, Shepard hoped beyond all hope that she had hallucinated it. Lack of sleep, poor diet, low blood pressure, whatever excuse it could be… she desperately begged for an easy answer to a complicated problem.

All that potential, however, was washed aside as EDI shied her face away from Shepard's gaze. It was a human action, that sense of guilt, and in any other time Shepard would have been remarking on the AI's ability to learn and assimilate, but it wasn't the time, there would never be a time for that again.

"I am sorry," EDI spoke softly.

Shepard's words were loud as she made her accusation. "Did you know?"

"I have always known. I was originally bound by Cerberus' shackles to not reveal to you all the details of Project Lazarus. Once they were removed…" The door blinked green, unlocked, but EDI didn't open it, just lowered her hand as they conversed. "…I decided that it would be in your best interest that you did not know the truth."

"The truth?" Kaidan interjected, looking between Shepard and EDI. "What's going on?"

"Of course I needed to know!" Shepard shouted. "How could you ever think I didn't deserve to know who— _what_ —I really was?"

"At the time, I weighed the options. Since it was not something that could be changed, even upon knowing the reality of the circumstances upon your origin, I deemed it unimportant and detrimental to reveal… information that would only harm you, Shepard."

"It wasn't your call to make!"

EDI winced, and before Shepard could make a move closer to the AI, Kaidan grabbed hold of her upper arm, pulling her back.

"What are you talking about? Someone—Fuck!—what the hell is going on?"

Shepard turned to him, going still as their eyes met. Though confusion had been apparent in his tone, the expression his face wore was that of concern and worry. Even at the worst of times, that look of distress had never been often seen, and Shepard longed to simply press her body to his, arms around his back, her face buried into the mix of soft skin and rough stubble of his neck, all the things that made her feel at home. On instinct her hand jerked upwards, longing to deliver the comfort that had become a blessing between the two of them since they reconciled. She stopped, however, just as quickly, eyes widening as she took in, _really_ took in, the man before her and the surrounding circumstances.

Shame radiated from her core on out to her limbs and Shepard tugged her arm and shoulder away from him, putting distance between them both. His eyebrows raised in painful surprise.

"Please Shepard, what—"

"What'd they do with it—with her?" Shepard looked back to EDI, no longer able to bear the weight of the strain Kaidan wore, nor her own guilt.

"She… is here."

Her knees weakened for the blink of an eye but she caught herself on the computer console before Kaidan could reach out to help steady her. "Do you know where?"

"The system's last records indicate the laboratory is nearest the Illusive Man's chamber."

There was no time to waste, precious seconds passing by as the Normandy and the Alliance fleet were busy around the space station and while Cerberus soldiers inside built defenses and barriers between Shepard and her intended destination. Complete the mission no matter the cost. That had always been her duty, one she'd followed through life… and death. She considered the thought and decided that just this once, she would be selfish.

Standing up straight, Shepard ejected the thermal clip from her gun and loaded in a fresh one. "Open that fucking door."

—-

By time they made it to the laboratory, Shepard was more exhausted from rebuffing Kaidan at every lull in fighting than each close call with a phantom. There was no stopping her as EDI nodded towards the doorway on the far side of the long hallway, and without missing a step or beat, Shepard holstered her weapon and armed her omni-blade. With a running start, she threw her weight into it, slamming the sharp point of the glowing knife between the two halves of the uniform doorway.

It was unorthodox, and not the kind of thing an ordinary human, biotic or otherwise, would be able to manage, but Shepard shouldered on, even at Kaidan's panted protests. She wriggled the blade with what little give there was, and with a final push, it slipped through, buried to her fist. Shepard hauled it downward, feeling the locking mechanism begin to give, tearing behind her artificially enhanced strength. Above her head, Shepard heard and felt a _thump_ , and when she raised her eyes, it was there she saw Kaidan struggling along with her, his reinforced combat knife between his hands as he made an attempt at helping, even if he didn't know what for. For a million reasons, the worst of which was his heart she was certain that she would break once they get inside, tears pricked at her eyes.

The doors lost the battle, giving way, and Shepard fell to the floor with the tension gone. Kaidan pulled her up by the shoulders of her armor, and she let him, too busy scrambling to her feet to fight him off.

Shepard was the first one in, and for the first time since they left that room with the computer console a few floors down and half a station away, she didn't rush.

It was exactly like all the other labs they'd seen in Cronos, examining tables and lab equipment spread through the room. Where data pads and boxes were scattered through the others signifying recent use and a certain sense of being worked and lived in, the counter tops of this lab in particular were bare. No one, she was sure, had been there in quite some time.

The lights were off, in power-save mode for god knows how long, and Shepard raised her omni-tool to illuminate her way the further she moved in. There was nothing, not so much as a beep of a machine to signal she was on the right track, but she trusted in that feeling deep in her stomach. She wasn't wrong. She wished she was, but she knew she wasn't wrong. Light reflected off something a few feet ahead. Moving forward, she reached out with her other hand, touching her fingertips to the curved glass of a tank vertically laid out before her.

Upon contact, she cried out, a shriek given in the darkness. There, reflected back at her, were the distorted remains of her own face.. Without all the strength she normally had, Shepard beat her fist into the tank, sliding to the floor as she gave up.

Kaidan's arms wrapped about Shepard a few seconds later when he finally caught up to her position. "You've got to tell me," he pleaded, and though it was still nearly pitch black in the room, the light of the orange glow of their omni-tools offer a candlelit experience of the immediate area. "What's going on? What don't I know?"

"Project Lazarus," she coughed and dug her fingers into the junctions of his armor as she hiccuped amidst the tears. "It wasn't about reconstruction, Kaidan. It didn't work. _I'm_ Project Lazarus."

"I know," his fingers ran through her hair, holding her close, "that's what they called the operation. But it worked—you're here, Shepard. You're here and you're real, how can you say it didn't work?"

She fought, pushing him as she clawed her way to her feet, body wavering as she used the tank for support. Her omni-tool was drawn up, and she lit the contents of the tank once more. "Shepard died over Alchera. Lazarus— _I_ —was made to replace her."

Kaidan focused on the image before them. In a pod not unlike that of the one he'd read her krogan, Grunt, had been grown in, or the colonists on Horizon had been put into by the Collectors, there was something that only barely resembled what had once been alive and human. The shape was right, a head down to shoulders, arms extending from there, though one side stopped halfway down the upper arm, the other missing most of the fingers on its hand.

At first, he was unsure of what he was supposed to be seeing. Compared to all the horrible things they'd been witness to lately, from husks to bodies otherwise mutilated, this was barely enough to make him blink twice. But as his eyes followed downward over the skin that had grown almost leathery in appearance, perhaps from damage done to it or a failed attempt at restoring what once was, Kaidan finally began to understand.

Down the left side of the abdomen was the marred and torn ink of a tattoo, a tattoo he'd gotten to know intimately years ago, and had been happy to find still there in their more recent encounters when he'd traced the pattern with his lips. And in the fluid, whatever the hell it was that had been flooded into the tank to preserve the corpse, he watched dull strands of once shiny and vibrant hair float and sway in the circulating liquid. There wasn't much hair left, across her skull he saw skin where it had been shaved, her scalp cut open, peeled back, and then rather rudimentarily stitched back together without care at her temple. He recognized her now. This was the woman he loved. This was Shepard.

He looked beside him to the living version of the woman he'd come to admire, trust, and care for years ago. His brow furrowed, lips pressed into a flattened line of a grimace, disgust. From the back of his throat, Kaidan couldn't hold back the soft sounds of distress that overwhelmed him without his consent. The woman—the stranger—next to him was doing her own equivalent in silence, tears wetting her cheeks. She took a step away from him.

"I didn't know," she said, shaking her head.

Kaidan glanced back to the tank, to what remained of the woman he knew for a few months all those years ago. Shepard, his Commander, his friend, his lover—all of it, for only a few months of time. She didn't deserve what had become of her. All over her body, there were more cuts like the ones at her skull, he now realized, where she had been systematically taken apart as Cerberus desperately tried to breathe life back into the dead body but failed. And because of that, because of their inability to play God or Goddess, they had turned to another option. They'd grown a replacement, made her better, stronger, faster. Perfect.

"I wouldn't have," the Shepard clone's words were strangled, a hand shielding her eyes, "I'm sorry Kaidan. If I knew, I never would have… you and I, I'm sorry."

There was pain, desperate pain he couldn't understand at being deceived and lied to, but also that kind of mourning that he'd once surrendered to in the two years he'd believed her dead. She was dead. After everything, after all of it, she really _was_ dead. She was… and at the same time, she wasn't. Inside, the torment of betrayal pressed down at him. Shepard had been dead and for the last few weeks time he'd been sleeping in her impostor's bed, making love to an imitation—he felt overcome with sickness. Turning to the side, he leaned on the tank and wretched onto the floor.

EDI called from the partially open, distant doorway. "We have to finish the mission," she reminded them of their urgency. "There isn't much time remaining."

Kaidan silently went first and Shepard followed behind, but not a few steps from the tank did she suddenly stop, turning around as she drew her pistol and fired it at the glass above the dead Shepard's head. The tank shattered, cracking from the top on down to the bottom, and she returned, punching at the weakened glass with the elbow of her armor as the fluid began to drain out of the tank, alarms sounding within the room at the sensed intrusion and system's compromised integrity.

She reached her hands inside and slid them under the corpse's arms, removing her from the harness and hauling the partially decomposed body out. It was a heavy weight and difficult position, but she managed in laying the carcass along the floor.

Part of her was repulsed, especially when confronted with the severity of the body's state up close. The eyes were gone and her face showed for it, the rest of it sunken slightly from the effects of death. Her legs, on the vast whole, were gone as well, left with the stumps of thighs, her skin torn and cracked all over where Cerberus hadn't made their own incisions. With quiet affection, she brushed the dead Shepard's hair from her forehead, wiped the fluid from her cheeks.

"You didn't deserve this," she whispered as she knelt beside the woman that once was. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry they cut you open, that they couldn't let you rest in peace. I'm sorry they did it to you to make me."

Shepard reached up into the collar of her armor to find the new set of dog tags, the same ones Anderson had given her back on Earth.. She wished now that she'd opened the frame with the old ones as she'd longed to do, if only so she could gift the body with what had rightfully belonged to her. It would have to do, however, and Shepard pulled until the chain snapped, laying them down on her dead sister's chest.

Taking a grenade from the pouch at her waistband, she armed the correct sequence before placing it on the corpse's abdomen, curling what was left of the woman's only hand around it. Shepard had mere seconds to say her goodbye, and when she finally did make her leave, she did so without looking back. Fifteen seconds ticked by, and barely clear of the doors she could feel the heat of the explosion on the back of her neck. With it, it took all the pieces that once were the woman first known as Shepard, so that no one could ever bring her harm again.


	2. Chapter 2

The course was set for Earth by time they made it back to the Normandy with what little information the Prothean VI had for them. It would take a day to reach the Sol system and the planet of their destination, even burning the mass effect core at its full potential, and the mood onboard had turned somber. The end was in sight finally after all that time, and yet not a soul on the ship could make themselves believe they weren't headed directly for the gallows. They would live or they wouldn't, that was as simple as it was, and the circumstances of their impending deaths were most certainly out of their control. It was time to find comfort in the ones they loved, the friends they'd made, and leave their final messages should they not make it out in the end.

Shepard, when she'd woken in the morning cycle a few hours before they'd arrived at Anadius and subsequently the Cerberus base, had seen the night ahead of her spent beside Kaidan. So much time had been foolishly wasted between them and in her last hours, Shepard had believed fully that of all the places she'd want to be while death was knocking on her door, it would be with him. The day's revelations, however, had left her alone. When the shuttle had docked with the Normandy, Kaidan had been the first one off, seemingly unable to spend another moment in the cramped space beside her. She'd watched him go, wanted to say something as he did, but no words came to mind. Nothing that would fix it and nothing that she thought she had any kind of right to say to him at all. Since then, he'd haunted the ship like a ghost, always slipping just beyond her wherever she walked.

Truth be told, she was jealous. Shepard had only wanted to be left alone with her thoughts since they'd come back. For her crew, though, she made her nightly rounds like nothing had changed at all. They would need to continue to believe in her.

At the end of the night, Shepard retired to her cabin. The doors had scarcely opened for a second when her eyes went to her desk and to the old set of dog tags tucked away in the corner. Shepard took the frame in her hands, pressed her finger tips to the glass, and when she lifted them, she tilted the item until it caught the light and the grease markings of her fingerprints were easily seen. A dead woman's fingerprints, she thought, and in the next instant, tossed the frame back to the countertop.

"EDI?"

"Yes, Shepard?"

She curled her hands around the back of her desk chair, taking in steady, deep breaths as her eyes shut. "I want to know about me, EDI. Can you forward any information you have to my terminal?"

"Of course, Commander," a beat, "they are now available."

"Where's Major Alenko?"

"Observation room. Would you like me to page him?"

"No, I—" She shook her head and rounded her chair, taking a seat, sinking in as she let every muscle in her body relax into it. "Has he said anything to you about what we learned about me?"

"No, and he has not engaged any of the other crew regarding the circumstances, as far as I have seen."

"Thank you," she sighed.

"—But that is not to say he is well, Shepard."

Even if EDI saw all, Shepard was glad the physical form of her ship's AI wasn't there, especially not to catch the sudden tense of her body. "What do you mean?"

"Since returning, he has deviated from his nightly routine. Major Alenko did not join the rest of the crew for dinner, nor did he take the time to answer his personal or Spectre, correspondence. He has, however, called up an old photo of you and he on his omni-tool for most of the evening."

"Not me," she answered, shaking her head, "he's thinking of the other Shepard. We only ever took one photograph together, just the two of us. It was done while the Normandy was in for repairs after everything happened with Saren. He's looking at her."

"Technically correct, but since you two are one in the—"

"We're _not_."

"I will defer to your opinion, Commander."

It was well into the middle of the night before Shepard disengaged the terminal. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, and yet the rest of her body thrummed on, unwilling and unable to crawl into bed if it meant doing so alone.

Shepard pressed thumb and forefinger into her closed eyelids in a last ditch attempt at restoring proper vision and function, but as she blinked them open, it proved to be fruitless. All she saw, all she thought of, was the hollowness behind the _other_ Shepard's lids, where eyes had once been, the delicate tissue probably some of the first to go. Her own eyes, she knew, were organic but with implants, much like the rest of her. Enhancements, reinforcements, those were what littered through the rest of her body, meant to improve upon where the original Shepard's body had failed and been vulnerable before.

While she hadn't comprehended anywhere near even half of the data EDI had dumped onto her console, she'd understood _enough_. Enough to know that in addition to everything else, a number of her organs weren't even her own, instead they were vat grown, expensive replacements usually reserved for the wealthy when their livers failed from decades of misuse. The original Shepard's body had been taken apart and studied, replacing the inefficient and weak with the ideal. In the time after she'd awoken from what she'd been told was simply her death, her reconstruction, her return to life, Shepard had thought on an old story back then. Even more now than ever, she believed it to be true. Frankenstein. She was the Illusive Man's monster, stitched together piece by piece and life breathed into it.

Shepard upturned her hands on the lap of her thighs. There had been a small scar there from when she was a child, a raised sliver of shiny scar tissue across the meat of her palm. It had been small, nearly invisible and easily confused with the hand's natural folds and lines, and because of that, it had been something even Cerberus, with all their attention to detail, had missed. The big scars, the tattoos, they were easily replaced and recreated. The things that only she would know, however, were gone.

She traced the place where that scar had once been. If she thought on it, she could see it in her mind's eye, could recall the day she'd earned it over mishandling a knife in her parents' kitchen. And yet, when her eyes sought out what had been with her nearly her entire life, it was absent. No matter how real it felt, it hadn't been her memory. Fingers curling into a fist, she rubbed the the pad of her middle finger over the unmarred skin for a second, and then abruptly and roughly, pushed away from the desk, headed out from the cabin.

The ride down was deceptively slow, the elevator depositing her in the crew quarters. The mess was empty, rare for even this hour, as Shepard had ordered the crew to seek what little rest and relaxation could be afforded on the eve of battle. She'd had every intention of seeking a late meal, but the half-stocked fridge failed to drum up what little appetite she'd had over the weeks. Instead, as she closed the refrigerator door, her eyes wandered back towards the main hallway, in the direction of Starboard Observation. There was no guarantee he was there, but she had a hunch he hadn't the heart to vacate the place that had become his home, second only to her cabin. She hesitated, then swore under her breath and headed for the room in question.

"Was wondering when you were going to show up," Kaidan began even before the doors were fully opened.

She hadn't known what to expect if he was actually there. Perhaps, she hoped, he would have been asleep and just maybe she wouldn't have had the heart to wake him from where he slept. Instead, Kaidan sat on the couch with his back to her, watching the stars. Shepard walked past him and stood at the window, gazing on outward.

"Are you all right?"

"Me?" He coughed, and though she couldn't see him, she imagined his usual habit of drawing the back of his hand to his mouth as he did so. "Yeah… I'll be fine. I know my job."

"I don't mean about tomorrow, I meant about today."

The silence was so prolonged, Shepard would have nearly believed he'd fallen asleep if she hadn't heard him shifting where he sat. "I don't really know what I'm supposed to think. There are reasons things like this have never been allowed, because ethically, morally…"

"Yeah," she nodded, feigning the small, short-lived smile she wore as she craned her neck to catch a glimpse of him.

"I've been sitting here," he said, staring past her and into the distance, "trying to figure out what all of this means to me. You look like her, you sound like her, if I ask you a question from years ago, I've no doubt you'll know the answer. But now we know that despite all of the evidence otherwise… you're not Shepard. Not the one I knew, at least. And I just don't know on what philosophical level this changes things. Maybe knowing what we know now shouldn't change anything, but I can't lie—it does, and I don't know what to do with that."

She wrapped her arms around herself and turned fully, leaning back on the glass to watch him. The expressions he made as he spoke were always so telling, and without seeing them firsthand, she felt as though she was only getting half the truth with him. But to her surprise, he was just… vacant. His eyes flickered to her directly and still there was nothing, a complete lack of anything, good or bad.

"Don't look at me like that," she whispered.

"Like what?"

"Like somehow I'm not the same woman you woke up next to this morning."

His brows shifted downward at the jab. "But are you the same woman I woke up next to three years ago?"

Shepard raised a hand, tracing over the shell of her ear from the top down to the lobe. "I can still feel you kissing me here the first time," she said, and continued to drag her fingertips down along the cut of her jaw. "Do you remember the night before Ilos?" Of course he did. She didn't look for any kind of response, just allowed her hand to fall lower over the front of her uniform blouse, tugging the first few buttons open. She folded back the fabric, exposing the swell of her breast and the deep brown of a larger freckle seated high atop it. "You kissed right here, told me it was yours. I can still hear you laughing as you say it, can feel your hair under my fingers as I run them over you scalp. Jesus Kaidan, I can even smell you." She let the shirt go, letting it hang partially open as she crossed the distance to sit beside him, her body turned in his direction. "You can't try to tell me that memory isn't _mine_."

"Is it, though? Now you _know_ , Shep—" He censored himself, swallowing the word down. "Now you know it wasn't you, so is it really yours?"

She cupped his cheek, and though he flinched, he didn't pull away. "I know I love you, Kaidan."

Much like the meal they'd had on the Presidium that had started all of this for them once again, Kaidan allowed his hand to grasp over hers, holding it steady to his face. He didn't, however, return the words. Shepard cut the awkward silence short, instead leaning in to press her mouth to his. It was just how it always felt, warm in temperature and in taste, soft but rough around the edges.

"Please," she whispered against the corner of his mouth, her free hand straying to find his other, linking their fingers together.

Though he was willing at first, it didn't take long for Kaidan to fight for his hand's freedom, setting it to her shoulder to push her back. His head shook vigorously, combing his fingers through his hair. "Fuck, I can't. I can't do this anymore—not, not to her."

Shepard shifted back in her seat, unable to move or do anything save watch him as he came apart. Kaidan leaned forward, elbows to his knees as he held his head in his hands.

"I keep wondering if there's something after this life. I'm not religious, but I can't stop thinking about it. What if I die and she's there waiting for me? What if she asks me how I could forget about her so easily, fall into bed with her—" With each word, he grew more distraught, and Shepard felt helpless as she watched. "—Her copy? What do I say? That it was easier to pretend you were the same person when now I _know_ you're not? How do I face her after what I've done?"

"She…" _would understand_ , she wanted to say. They were the same person, and yet, Shepard began to doubt herself. Would she really understand? Even as it was, she felt a quiet jealousy begin to burn in her chest at the thought of having to compete for Kaidan's affections with another version of herself. Maybe the only reason she believed the old Shepard would understand was because _she_ wanted her to. It was the easy answer and it was what she wanted, but was it real? Her head swam as the confusion and uncertainty took root.

"When I think about you and I together now I'm just… I'm disgusted with myself. She's been dead this whole time, her body holed up in some Cerberus lab, and I'm here, pretending it never happened. How," he lifted his head, and when he finally looked back to her, tears were welled in the corners of his eyes, "can I explain to her that every time I said I loved you, they were really meant for her?"

Shepard recoiled from him like she'd been slapped; his words hurt more than the sting of an open palm across her cheek ever could've. No, of course he didn't love her, he was in love with the woman he thought she was. And whether it could be argued that they were one in the same, whether they had the same thoughts and memories and bodies, there was something else, something that could never get proper definition like even the archaic idea of a _soul_ that separated her from the woman that he'd first loved.

Strangled, she barely got her words out. "I don't know."

"Hey—" Kaidan raised a hand to her as though he was to offer comfort, but stopped short. "I didn't mean…"

"I know exactly what you meant," and to stave off her tears, Shepard rubbed the side of her hands against the corner of her eyes. "I've already thought all of it myself. Everything you could ever possibly think—I've already thought it, so don't worry."

"I'm…" He didn't finish his apology and she was thankful for it. It was already too forced, like a child being scolded by his mother and being made to ask for forgiveness.

"At least I know what I am now," she started, "even if it's far worse than I ever imagined. At least I know where I stand."

"Shepard—"

"I'm sorry I came back."

"It's not like it was your choice."

"Yeah," with that she stood up, fastening the lowermost open buttons of her shirt to preserve some kind of dignity as he so quickly turned from lover to stranger. "But you were right not to trust me, weren't you? And I convinced you, made you believe I was her, undid the two years of mourning you'd done. For all of that, I'm sorry."

"Me too."

"I want you to know," Shepard said softly, "that I may not be her in the way we thought, but every part of my body feels like it is. It's like I fell asleep and woke up and now the world is upside down and I just have to deal with it even if I don't know where I fit in, if I even have the right to be here at all. She never got to say it, Kaidan, but when I was—when she was—dying, suffocating after the Normandy exploded," she choked, and to her shock, Kaidan stood, mimicking her action from earlier as he set his hand to her cheek. He sought the answer in her eyes, waiting. "She was thinking that she wished she had been able to tell you how much she loved you. I knew back then, but I," intentional or not, she didn't correct herself, "was too scared to say it out loud. She would want me to make sure you knew that now."

He broke suddenly at her admission, and Shepard did the only thing she knew how, she drew her arms around him, cradled her palm to the back of his scalp as she held him to her. Kaidan engulfed her with his own arms, squeezing her tighter than she'd ever felt before. It wasn't like Horizon, not even the way he'd held her the first night they'd been together again a few weeks back. It was like after all this time Kaidan was finally able to say goodbye as she knew he must've dreamt of for so long. The crook of her neck was wet with his tears and as much as she fought off her own, she was unable to when she felt him shake as he cried.

_I_ love you, she wanted to whisper to him again, for even with what she knew now, all she'd ever known was the life that hadn't been hers. She did love him, but that didn't mean she could even begin to pretend that happiness awaited the two of them together. Kaidan, well, he would always belong to someone else—even if it was _her_ —and if he found the strength to stay as his part of their whole, Shepard wouldn't be able to bear the question that when he looked at her, did he see someone else? She was the old Shepard in so many ways, but at the same time, part of her desired to be loved for who she had been since Cerberus had made her, since she'd been the woman she'd proved herself to be. Asking Kaidan to do that would be the cruelest thing she could think of.

"She loved you," she repeated, and couldn't help herself from kissing the crown of his head, inhaling the sweet scent of his soap, the saltiness of sweat. She needed to remember this for herself. "And she knew you loved her."

They stood like that until their tears had gone mostly dry. Kaidan was the first to pull back and he wiped his tears away rather than let them continue to stain his cheeks.

"Despite everything else, I need you to trust me tomorrow, Kaidan. Trust that I can get us through this."

He tarried, but eventually gave her a stiff nod, the kind a lower ranking officer did their superior, rather than a lover or even just a friend. "Aye aye, Commander."

She nodded and stepped away, biting at the inside of her cheek to keep herself together. Commander, not Shepard. "I'll see you in the morning, Major. Get some rest."

Shepard made it only to the hallway before she fell apart once more, stalling beside the memorial where it stood, large and imposing. She imagined her name on it, just below Mordin's and Thane's, as she reached forward to feel over the empty name plate that waited to be filled.

"Shepard?"

She didn't turn, just pulled her hand back to herself and wiped away the tears from her cheeks and eyes, blinking rapidly in a desperate attempt to hurry away the redness she knew had to be there.

"What are you doing up, Garrus?"

He didn't answer, just came to stand beside her, offering the benefit of not looking directly at her. Garrus had always been good at reading between the lines. "We're not going to add anymore names to this."

"That's optimistic, even for you."

"I was thinking it's about time. I'm overdue for some."

Shepard grasped his wrist, squeezed at him between the joints of armor he wore even at the late hour. "Get some rest." She headed for the elevator.

"You going to tell me what happened today, Shepard? Why Kaidan isn't spending the night with you?"

The doors opened and Shepard stepped inside. "Lovers' quarrel," she offered and shrugged a shoulder as nonchalantly as possible.

"At a time like this?" His brow plate raised and before the doors could close, he joined her in the elevator. "You'll have to try harder than that."


	3. Chapter 3

They shared drinks in her cabin, just the two of them. While on their first tour of duty together on the SR-2, Shepard's cabin had been practically off limits, there'd been a policy change the second go-around. Nightly drinks, dinner, and shooting the shit, that had all become commonplace with the more familiar faces. Liara and Garrus at first, the likes of Tali and Kaidan when they'd rejoined the crew, and then as time passed, even Vega, Cortez. It was familiar, the company of others while recounting the day's tales and kill tallies, but right now, this was something else, a little quieter.

Shepard stared up at the stars much like she'd done down in Observation, but this time she was laid out on her back, arms spread wide across the bed. Garrus took point on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table. The fish tank occupied most of his attention, but every so often he allowed himself the privilege of glancing back towards where Shepard lay, still as could be.

"Do Turians believe in souls, Garrus?"

"I'm sure some do, somewhere," he replied after a breath. "But our general ideas on spirits really aren't the same as what Humans think of when they say soul. Everything has a spirit, every idea, concept, thing. If someone believes it, puts faith and stock in whatever it is, it has a spirit. Those," he tipped his head to punctuate his words, even if she wasn't looking, "are our Spirits."

"But do _you_ have one?" Shepard rose, elbows back into the bed to support her as she watched him.

"It isn't about the individual, more about the big picture. The Normandy, we'd say there's a spirit to the Normandy, and it encompasses all the things we've accomplished with it, all the things it stands for. We're a part of that."

She sighed and let herself fall back into the wrinkled blanket, arms splayed around her head haphazardly. Defeated, that was how she felt and looked.

"I was going to ask why you were looking for religion when you've never needed it before, but," and he too sighed and relaxed, letting his body ease into the couch some more, the back of his head and fringe coming to rest on the top of the couch's back. "I don't think this is really about religion at all."

"I found out some things yesterday while we were in the Cerberus base, things about me, about how they made me."

"Let me guess," he nearly laughed, "Cerberus had more up their sleeve than they ever told you? I'm shocked, they're usually known for their open book policies."

Despite herself, Shepard was left smiling at the camaraderie shared between them. She wanted to savor it all, from the sound of his voice to the rumble of laughter in his chest, from how _easy_ things were to feeling as though she rightfully belonged where she was. While it could last, she wanted to hold on to it.

"Why are you letting it bother you?" Where he'd been light before, he was serious now, serious and quiet. "You know better than to let them get into your head, Shepard."

"It's…" her eyes shut and head shook side to side where she lay. Shepard palmed over her closed eyelids, further blocking out the light of the room. "What if I told you I wasn't the same woman you knew three years ago?"

"Hmm," Garrus considered the question audibly. "I'd tell you that I wasn't the same Turian you knew three years ago either."

It was true, she couldn't fault him that. The Garrus that she had met on the Citadel years ago was so very different from the man he was now, changes all made for the better. He'd been something of a friend before, but now he was so much more. A real friend, one until the very end. But still, she knew it wasn't quite the same.

"I mean," she cleared her throat, "that I'm really _not_ that woman. I'm not… I'm not Shepard."

His facial plates shifted, and simultaneously, Garrus sat up and on the edge of the couch while Shepard also rose, sitting like a child in the middle of her unmade bed. Their eyes met across the way and Garrus inclined his head in silent question, asking her to go on.

"We found her there. The one who died on the SR-1. Just what was left," she finally looked away, down to her hands as she laid them, palm up, once again in front of her. That scar, it would never be there. "I'm a copy, Garrus. They couldn't rebuild her so they made me instead, and gave me her memories so it was like I'd never died and I could finish the— _her_ —fight."

She didn't want to look to him, didn't want to see the horror on his face just like she'd seen it on Kaidan's in that empty laboratory while they both peered in on what remained of the woman she was made in the likeness of. Shepard hunched forward, slouching, and continued to stare at her hands, desperately wanting to slip through them and all the floors below, out into the ether like the first Shepard had gone.

"And now," she continued through his silence, "I don't know who I am or if I should be alive at all. Where do I go from here, knowing this? Do I keep assuming a life that isn't really mine? _Is_ it my life? Do I go out there tomorrow and hope that I don't make it out—"

" _Never_ say that," he cut her off. Shepard glanced up at his harsh tone, and he was staring at her, unwavering.

"Why? The woman you had loyalty to is dead. I'm just a non sequitur."

Garrus closed his eyes, a single shake of his head given as she spoke. He was calmer when his eyes reopened, and his dual-flanged voice showed for it. "I've spent more time with you on this ship than I ever did with her."

Shepard looked away.

"So if you're trying to tell me I'm not loyal to _you_ , then—then you really have lost your mind. It was _you_ who came to me on Omega, got me out of there five minutes before the end. I spent the night with _you_ before we went into the Omega-4 relay. _You_ , who I thought about every day while you were locked up, and _you_ who found me on Menae. The other Shepard—" he waved a hand dismissively, "whoever you or she was three years ago, that Shepard was a _hell_ of a woman and a soldier. But the woman that's been here since then—Shepard, look at me."

She couldn't lift her head no matter how hard she tried, just continued to avoid him as she bit into her lip, clenched her eyes shut while her hair obstructed the view of her face. A ringing sounded in her ears in the quiet of the room, and the next thing Shepard felt was the mattress of her bed dipping with added weight and then the warmth of his gloved fingertips to her chin, tilting her head up. When she opened her eyes, he was looking right back.

"You've been even more than she ever was."

There was so much conviction there, she wanted to throw away every doubt that had made its home rooted in her head over the last twelve hours. Fear, though, fear was a powerful thing. "I don't understand how you can say that," she pled her case, the final verdict of which she'd already assumed on her own. "Why don't you hate me? I've just been pretending—"

"Have you? All this time, you've known you weren't her and you've been concealing the fact from everyone?"

"You know what I meant."

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean what you're saying isn't crap, Shepard."

Her teeth gritted in frustration. She'd already made up her mind in how she expected things to go with him, and yet they continued to deviate. As hard as it was to make her confession, she felt she owed him the truth, and she was prepared to deal with the consequences as she'd already done with Kaidan. But one misstep outside the bounds she'd prepped for, and she was left floundering.

"I'm not saying it's not… completely fucked up, even for Cerberus," he gave in to her side, "but I'm not sure I understand what you think should happen. Go in to tomorrow hoping to die because you think it's on _your_ shoulders to right some wrong that was done to you?"

"To her."

"To both of you, then. You're just as alive as I am and while I know that I'll gladly die tomorrow to do my part for the galaxy, to save a friend, or to protect _you_ ," he reached for her wrist, and like she'd done to him earlier on the crew deck, he squeezed reassuringly, "it doesn't mean we should go looking for it."

"Why? Why would you do that?"

"Because you've always done it for me. I may have a better kill count," he playfully knocked their knuckles together, "but even I've got to begrudgingly admit I owe you a few when it comes to dragging my sorry ass back to safety."

The corner of her mouth fought the hint of a smile that crept over.

Garrus visibly eased. "Give Kaidan some time."

Shepard's brow knitted together, wiping away the previous moment of contentment. "I'm not sure there's anything left to give him time for."

"If this is where I'm supposed to take sides, let me first and foremost say that I always did think he was a hard-headed bastard."

Though it was quiet, even Shepard couldn't keep herself from laughing. It was exactly the response Garrus had wanted, and his wide-spread mandibles gave him away. Shepard patted his cheek and let it become a casual caress. "Don't mention it to him, all right? We've all got enough to think about tomorrow."

He sought out both of her hands and folded them within his own as he stood from where he'd taken a seat on her bed. Garrus gripped them tight to give her the answer she was looking for. "I'll see you in the morning. Do me a favor, don't spend what's left of the night worrying about things you can't change."

They released one another and Shepard nodded. He reached the doorway, but before he could depart, she had one last question for him.

"If souls exist, do you think I have one?"

His hand lingered on the open doorframe and he turned his neck just enough to watch her with a single, visor-covered eye. "I'm sure of it."


	4. Chapter 4

Shepard cursed Cerberus. They could have at least failed to carry over the memories she had of survival training and the vibrancy in which she recalled the very scent of MRE's. It didn't matter that the packaged food was typically of a variety, a grab bag of sorts of the same kind of pasty yack—it all smelled the same. What made matters worse was presence of a soldier beside her chowing down on some kind of unidentified slop mixture straight from the lukewarm pouch. All too easily Shepard was transported back to what felt—and was—a lifetime ago: day four of N-school extreme conditions survival training.

Her partner for the task had been an uneasy man, a boy almost, one of the younger ones admitted usually on a favor though rarely, if ever, making it through even the program's early exercises. He'd puked up half his MRE and the day's water rations while they'd been cramped together in their ill-crafted foxhole, waiting for night's guise of cover before moving again, lest they be spotted by their training officers. Shepard had sat there for hours, the heat of the day's sun baking down on their concealment, vomit festering and growing rancid.

She tore her package open. Beef stew. Fantastic.

Had it been another time and place, she would have skipped the meal or simply gone to the mess hall for a replacement, but after fighting the Reapers for months on Earth, Shepard didn't want to begin to imagine what the civilians were eating when their supplies ran thin. By all accounts, an MRE, as of late, was a delicacy. She slurped down the liquified chunks of vegetables and stringy meat, and closed her eyes to keep them off just how positively her meal already looked like it had come up once, if not twice. It even made her miss James' cooking.

At the trash can—and that particularly simple thing amazed her, that despite how London itself resembled a garbage dump after nuclear war, humans could still feel the need to maintain some semblance of order and normality by employing the use of trash receptacles—a soldier pushed past her, juggling the remnants of his meal and his helmet in his hand.

"Sorry," he grunted, more out of force of habit than genuine concern, and when he turned to leave, helmet raised in both of his hands at chest level, the soldier glanced in her direction. Shepard avoided his gaze, not wanting to see the moment she was recognized, but the man moved on, unaware.

Though the thing she longed most for—aside from the Reapers to go straight to hell and for the galaxy to be whole again—was a hot shower, she had to admit there was something cathartic about the level of dishevelment she'd reached. Her hair was slicked back, stone and cement fragments caked in with the drying sweat and rainwater. Where her face wasn't bloody and bruised, dirt and dust did the job of letting her blend in with all the other unwashed and tired masses. And her armor, well, it had seen far better days with a cracked casing on her thigh, the iconic red striping concealed with her gauntlet removed and tucked under an arm. For the duration of her next breath, Shepard reveled in the joy of anonymity.

Making her way out into the makeshift courtyard, crafted from once-busy city streets barricaded to offer some semblance of safety and cover for the Alliance soldiers that met there, Shepard said goodbye to that sense of being just lost in the crowd as she pulled the gauntlet back on and secured the fastenings on the rest of her armor where they'd previously been loose and slackened in the downtime. A passing marine saluted her and Shepard nodded on back.

"Seen Major Alenko? Blue armor, biotic, tall—" She held her hand above her head, indicating the approximate height.

"Yes, ma'am, I know who he is. I saw him at the end of the block not a minute ago."

Giving her thanks, she headed out in the indicated direction. Sure enough, Kaidan was there, lost in conversation. Even at a distance she could see the creases of his forehead as he spoke, the careful uncertainty he gave away even without knowing. Since he'd rejoined the crew, Kaidan had become a key member of her groundside team when needed. Though it was unspoken that everyone on the crew was ready and willing to go with her wherever she may have led, it was usually he and Garrus who were waiting for her before the call was even made. This morning, however ready he may have been while patiently suiting up into his gear, he gave no glance to her when Shepard was making the choice about what team would follow her out. In the end, she had decided to let him lead his own squad, allowing him to get the space she thought he not only wanted, but needed.

The woman speaking to Kaidan lifted her head, gesturing to Shepard as she approached, and stepped away to give them some privacy.

"Hey, there you are."

"You ready?"

He sighed and delivered his lackluster words. "For anything. Bring it on."

Shepard had always expected tears for this goodbye, but she'd never seen them coming like this. Oh, there were tears already wetting her eyes at the knowledge that both of their deaths were not just likely, but almost certain, and there were also some that came from something else, and that was the wondering of whether he thought such an ending wasn't for the best. Deep in her thoughts, he mentioned something about his students and she responded, though she couldn't quite remember what had even left her mouth.

"We know the score," and he looked away, down to their feet, "we know this is goodbye."

Had it been another life, maybe Shepard would have insisted otherwise, and the words, even now, hung on the tip of her tongue. But the possibility of his refusal left her mulling over them, changing course. "Yeah," she nodded faintly in agreement. "We know the score."

"And I'm not afraid to die."

"Kaidan—" The right rebuttal wasn't there waiting for her, and Shepard thought of the advice—or had it been an order?—from Garrus the night before. "Don't go looking for the end… to get back to her. She wouldn't want that, there's no question."

"No," he choked, "I know. You know, I don't have many regrets, but some of the things I said last night…"

"It's all right, I understand. If they'd done this to you, I can't say there isn't a chance I might feel the same way. On top of everything else, it's been a lot to take in."

He laughed to himself. "Understatement of the century."

"Yeah, well, when have things ever been easy for us?"

It was like nothing had gone wrong for that instant of time. Identical expressions mirrored one another, their smiles held off but coming through anyway. Like nothing had changed at all.

"Do you ever think…" Shepard stopped herself. There was no use in going down that road.

"What?"

"No. It doesn't matter," Kaidan's doubt stared back at her, evidenced in the slant of his brows, but for all the begging she felt assuredly ready to do, Shepard didn't elaborate. Even in her wildest dreams, she didn't believe there was hope for them, and putting him on the spot before such a fight would only be setting herself to be lied to. False comforts: she most definitely did not want. "Take care of yourself, Kaidan." She moved to sidestep him, but paused. "And when this ends, tell the Alliance to go fuck themselves. Go find your parents first, make sure they're safe."

He caught her by the wrist before she could get beyond his reach, pulling her back to him, even if it wasn't intimate by any standards. Shepard, though, ended that embargo, throwing her arms around him just as she'd done in Starboard Observation, albeit with the kind of fierce fervor that was warranted in a goodbye of this magnitude. It was a small mercy that Kaidan returned it.

"I tried to do my best," she murmured. "I'm sorry this is how it ended for you and me."

"I know—so am I."

Shepard kissed the side of his scalp, his ear, his cheek, any part of him that was in her path as she settled back down onto the flat soles of her boots, still keeping Kaidan within the circle of her arms but without being so close. If this really would be the last time she saw him, there were things she needed to say. "I don't—I don't want you to say anything right now. I just want you to look at me and let me say what I need to."

Already following her orders, Kaidan simply gave a small inclination of his head.

"She loved you. But I loved you just as much." Shepard touched her hand to his cheek, let her gloved thumb trace from between his eyebrows down the bridge of his nose. "I don't know how any of it works. I don't know if she's me or I'm her, if we're two different people entirely. That's something I don't think I'm ever going to know. I don't regret the time since you've been back with me… but I regret making you feel this way in the end. I—" Despite her orders for him not to look away, not under any circumstances, Shepard was guilty of that offense. She glanced downward, waiting until she'd regained a modicum of composure before she met his brown eyes again. "I've never loved anyone else, didn't think I needed or even wanted it. But I was wrong—I was so wrong."

Kaidan kept up his end of the bargain, not saying a word, not even with tears welled in his eyes as Shepard spoke and then finally pulled away. She ran her thumb against the tips of her other fingers, allowing herself to continue to remember the feel of his nose and profile under her touch.

"Take care, Major Alenko."

Rooted to the ground, he watched her go. "…Stay safe."

—

It wasn't that Shepard hadn't seen the devastation of Earth from orbit, or that they hadn't fought through obliterated buildings and dead bodies. They'd seen it all already, there just hadn't been the time to actually take in what all of it meant when a pack of cannibals were keeping them pinned down and a brute was on her heels. Now, though, climbing through the wreckage of homes and businesses, Shepard took in the little details. A wind blew against the pages of a notebook on the sidewalk, parts torn and missing, others stained with blood on the once vibrant colored drawings belonging to a child. Fragments of ceramic cups from a family's china set crushed under her foot. A trampled plant that had no doubt once been potted and decorating someone's home was ground into the floor, boot treads patterning what was once green.

People used to live here, and where were they now? Dead? Enslaved in a Reaper camp? She should've been quicker, not wasted so many days on the Citadel, should've put a gun to everyone's head who wouldn't listen, slept instead of making love with Kaidan so that her feet wouldn't drag in the next mission. All of it, even every pity party she'd thrown for herself in the last twenty four hours, should have taken a backseat to the rest of the world, the rest of the galaxy.

Shepard made it to the next floor of the building and spied a glimmer of light off something in the corner of what used to be a bedroom, but now housed a solitary marine standing guard and a temporary computer terminal. Biting the fingers of her right glove, she removed it as she crouched down and sifted through the thick layer of ash. Though heavily tarnished and dirtied, Shepard recognized the item as a locket, silver and oval. She slipped the edge of her short fingernail along the edge, creating leverage to force it open and to get a glimpse of the photos stored inside, the people behind the destruction. The latch gave way, but inside there was nothing, just the empty matching sides where pictures belonged.

Back on Mindoir, she'd had a similar necklace gifted to her as a child from a grandmother—her mother's mother—that had passed not long after. It was more round than this one, slightly smaller and more delicate if she could recall it well enough. And hers, there had been photographs inside of each of her parents. It had been lost when the slavers came, not permitted to return to the home in the aftermath. By time Shepard had finally returned to Mindoir, the first time since she'd left as a teenager, it was a decade later and her home had been demolished, new settlements built on top of her parents' farmland like her family's blood didn't still soak the soil.

She took the locket with her, fastening it around her neck to replace the absent weight of the dog tags she'd left with the original Shepard's corpse. Tucking it into the collar of her armor and undersuit, she moved to the next room to find Garrus waiting and watching her as she approached.

"So I guess this is…" he said, shifting his weight.

"Just like old times."

"Might be the last time we get to say that."

"You think we're going to lose?"

Garrus was quick to shake his head but kept his eyes on her; she had his full attention. "No, I think we're going to kick the Reapers back into whatever black hole they crawled out of. Then…" he took a breath, like he was building his courage, "we're going to retire somewhere warm and tropical, live off the royalties from the vids."

Warm and tropical. She tried to imagine it, some idealistic place based off the vids she'd seen, pictures hung in offices and hotel rooms, the garden planets she'd visited.

Garrus stepped in closer, his next words only for her despite the other Turians in the room. "We'll figure out what we're good at other than shooting things and head-butting Krogan. Whether you want to be… Shepard or you want to be someone else. Yourself."

She'd nearly forgotten the reality of her existence until his words brought it back. Despite his acceptance of her predicament, Shepard still carried a hint of shame, but that was on her, not on him. His idea, though, she had to admit there was something to it. There hadn't been enough time, even with how little sleep she'd gotten the night before, to consider all the details of her borrowed life. Maybe if she made it out alive, she would have the time to find _herself_. Leave it to her to find a sliver of optimism only while at death's door.

"I'll meet you there."

With great reluctance, Garrus sighed and spoke, shaking his head. "I've got a bad feeling you're going to do something stupid out there today, Shepard."

She forced a bit of a smile to try to pull the same out of him. "Wouldn't be an average day if I didn't do something stupid."

Garrus wasn't hearing any of the humor and instead touched his hand to her side to get her attention. "I mean it—remember what I said last night."

Throat suddenly dry, Shepard swallowed over the hoarseness as she was on the receiving end of his fearful accusation. "If something happens to me, Garrus…"

"There's no Vakarian without Shepard," once more he moved in, their noses nearly brushing, his breath hot on her face. That close, she could even smell him, the musky spice buried beneath oil and grease and the medi-gel he wore for his wounds. The last time she'd been that near him had been the just before their venture into the Omega-4 relay, and for the briefest of moments between his words, Shepard lost herself in the recollection of the night their friendship had crossed more than a couple boundaries.

His blue eyes narrowed at her and Shepard came back to the present at the sound of his voice. "Forgive the insubordination, but your friend has an order for you: come back alive."

For him, at least, there was no other answer she could give. "I will."

—

The goodbyes to the rest of the crew proceeded on, and though they were by no definition easy, they were _easier_. She was Shepard to them, the Commander, and never would they know the difference. So when Liara offered her a gift, one that came from the melding of minds, Shepard hesitated, afraid of what the Asari would see when their nervous systems joined together as one.

Liara touched her hand to Shepard's shoulder and Shepard gave in, throwing caution to the wind to say goodbye to her old friend.

Around them, the room faded to black nothingness. A night's sky from the fields behind her parent's house without the light pollution of a big city, how Shepard imagined the universe might have looked when it first began. Liara curled herself around Shepard's arm, and somewhere off in the distance, the darkness began to fade away just as a light cut through like a sun rising over the horizon. All at once, it felt like nothing, but everything. An out of body experience where the physical didn't exist. It was euphoric.

And just like that, they were back in London, Liara's bright blue eyes staring back at her. There was no reaction at first, and then the subtle flicker of her eyelids before she looked the human from toe to crown. Shepard trusted she understood what that meant.

"Goddess…" Liara took Shepard's hands in her own, holding them tight between them at waist height. "When did you find out?"

"What Cerberus did? Yesterday."

Liara's head tilted slightly off to the side, studying Shepard's face. "No—I… does Kaidan—" but something she saw stopped her in her verbal tracks, and Liara let the subject go with a softened, saddened look to the corners of her eyes. "Thank you, for everything."

Shepard was thankful there was no needed explanation, and when Liara released her, she moved towards the exit.

"Shepard?" Liara called.

"Yeah?"

"Please… take care of yourself out there. Be careful."

—

High above Earth, Shepard railed against the choices offered to her. To control the Reapers, just as Cerberus has tried to control her. To create synthesis, forcing something on the galaxy they didn't ask for like had been done to her. And to destroy, to breed more destruction where she'd suffered from it and taken part in it for most of her life. Through the paradox of a hazy fog of pain and numbness, Shepard thought back on what the woman she was made in the likeness of would have done. She'd been made to fulfill the destiny where the first Commander Shepard had failed, and to honor that woman, she would finish what was started.

Shepard raised her weapon and fired at the glowing red glass. The tube cracked, the sound ringing in her ears seconds before the energy pulsed out and the Citadel was left shattering in its wake. In her last conscious moments, Shepard finally felt free of the burden it was to be a woman that no longer existed.

—

The soil beneath Shepard's back was cool, a chill running down her spine as a gust of wind whipped across her skin, hair blown into her eyes. She made no move to brush it aside, knowing all too well another swift breeze would put the strands right back, and instead blinked them clear of her eyelashes. Even in the darkness, she could see a cloud moving across the sky, grey where the rest of space was black and dotted with stars.

From just beyond her, Shepard heard the crunch of grass, a telltale sign of an interloper encroaching on the nearby space. She didn't bother to move. Worry didn't seem to exist.

"Staying out here all night?" The voice was her own.

"Mmhmm," she hummed, like nothing was amiss.

The stranger sat beside her, arms wrapped around her knees. Shepard let her head fall to the side to catch a glimpse of the person, and though it should have been a shock, there was no surprise to her when she recognized it to be herself.

"Can't stay here," the other Shepard said.

Defiant, she replied, "you can take my place."

Her companion gave a laugh, though it was heavy and sad. "Would if I could, but you know there isn't a place for me anymore."

"Not sure there _ever_ was a place for me."

Other Shepard laid back, mimicking the posture and position of the first, legs extended out, arms folded back to pillow her head.

"We're on Mindoir, aren't we?" Shepard asked.

"Where else would we be?"

Shepard watched her sister, her original, the first. "Are Mom and Dad here?"

"In the house."

She took a deliberate glance back, craning her neck as far as it would go. In the distance she caught the glow of dim lights from the ground floor windows of the home. It was just as she remembered. "Do you think they'd want to see me?" She asked, hopeful.

"They will see you. Someday. And they'll be happy when they do."

A hot tear streaked down the side of her face and Shepard clenched her teeth and jaw tightly together. She hadn't known how good it would feel to hear that.

"But now," the other continued, "you get to be you."

"And if I don't want to?"

"That's not how it works. You don't get a choice," she said, plain as day.

Shepard didn't say anything for a long time after that, and neither did her identical match. The air grew colder, but not uncomfortably so. Here, she understood, nothing would ever be anything beyond _just_ _right._

"Kaidan misses you," Shepard confided, delivering a message for the absent man.

Her sister turned towards her, smiling despite the tears she held back. "I miss him too." The words seemed to ignite her afterward, sitting up and then standing, brushing off the seat of her pants to clean off the grass and dirt. She looked back down to Shepard and patted the dog tags hanging from her own neck. "Thanks for these. Didn't feel right without them."

It wasn't the type of thing that a _you're welcome_ would suffice for, so Shepard kept mum on the subject and simply sat up. "Where are you going?"

"Back inside," the original Shepard replied, and bent at the waist, leaning down to kiss Shepard's forehead. "I'm proud of you. You did good," she whispered, but her voice was strangely mingled with that of Anderson's. He'd said the same thing in the minutes before he died.

Shepard cocked her head at the irregularity. She blinked, and then she woke up.


	5. Chapter 5

The world was blurry as she awoke, and instead of detail all Shepard could make out were fuzzy shapes, brushes of color like an old oil painting. There was a brightness but she wasn't sure how much she could trust her senses. How long had she been out? Where was she? What had _happened_ to her? Immediately, she thought of that clouded field of vision she'd seen through over a year before in some Cerberus lab, the distorted voices of Miranda and a man she'd briefly known as Wilson talking and yelling, arguing over her early consciousness. But there were no voices here, none that she could hear as a loud ringing grew duller and softer in her ears.

Her body felt heavy, and as she tested her tired and worn muscles, she was unable to decide if her limbs were just beyond use, or she was restrained. Shepard's mouth felt dry as a desert, lips chapped, but at least she was breathing on her own, a relief, however paltry it was. She tried to call out, even if she knew better than to make noise in unknown circumstances, but it only launched her into a small cough. The flesh of her cheeks, her neck, her chest, felt tight as it pulled under the strain.

She blinked, attempting to wash away the haze in which she was buried under. There was a light overhead she could make out now, so bright her eyes burned under the fluorescence, and Shepard lifted her right hand instinctively to shield them, but there was another tugging, this time from the back of her hand, an IV line being pulled, most likely. It didn't hurt, not really, and that coupled with the distinct lack of _all_ the other painful sensations in her body told her that she was heavily medicated. She was thankful for it, for the sweet relief it offered, but at the same time fearful of the implications. Cerberus, she thought of again. Maybe this was Cerberus all over again.

A panic rose in her chest, and this time it wasn't just because of how vulnerable she felt, but because she couldn't recall any of the recent past. How long had she been here? The last thing she remembered was the Citadel, London, Earth in all its devastation. Was she even the same woman that was before? Was she a third, a fourth, a fifth? She needed to be sure, needed to find a scar, a mark, anything that made her who she'd known herself to be in her last real memory. A kind of chill ran straight through her to her very core, and it left Shepard in a scrambling frenzy, limply dragging her hand up, limb shaking as she tried to hold it steady before her eyes. That scar on her hand, the one that had belonged the original Shepard, it was still absent. Her heart broke and tears came. Somehow, she'd hoped, that just maybe it might all have been a horrible dream, and like happened in all the stories of childhood, the hero would get what she earned in the end; she would be made whole. She wouldn't, as it turned out.

Shepard fought to lift her left arm, she had the remains of a wound there she'd earned on the Collector base, but no matter how hard she tried, it stayed unmoving. It was almost as if the connection between brain and muscle was severed, and the implication of what that might have meant left soft cries of distress coming from the back of her throat. She turned her head to the side as much as she could to look for any sign of where she was, but the left side of her face and neck restricted her movement—for what reasons, she never wanted to know. Her one working hand grasped blindly at her bed sheet, looking for a handle usually on the side of hospital beds, but there was nothing to find purchase on.

She was struggling to sit up, her body screaming in utter and complete exhaustion, when a hand touched touched her shoulder, gently pushing her back down. Her eyes immediately found the stranger, and for half a delirious second, Shepard thought it was Miranda, once again come to build her from the ground up. She had the same dark hair even if it was pulled back, but her face was different, worn in and older, maybe fifty, fifty-five years old.

"Easy," the woman said. There was nothing unique or striking about her for Shepard to work off of, even if her heart wasn't otherwise pounding in genuine fear. No name tag, no emblem of the Alliance or Cerberus. About the only thing she could be sure of was that she was human. "You're okay," she reassured.

Despite the calm the woman offered, Shepard's hysteria remained present, even more so at the weakness she felt. How bad off could she be that she couldn't even _sit up_ on her own? She tried to inch herself discreetly to the other side of the bed, but her legs didn't want to work, the rest of her too tired to compensate. In all directions, her eyes searched around the room but found nothing from her vantage point, just a metal tray and the woman watching her, arm wrapped and suspended in a makeshift sling crafted of torn and tied cloth. There was no knife, no medical instrument to make a weapon of for herself, not that Shepard believed she could even wield it, but fight or flight was taking hold, and she was in no shape to begin the retreat.

"Do you know where you are?"

Shepard just blinked, both unwilling to respond and afraid to find out if she even had a voice left anymore at all.

The woman pursed her lips, visibly contemplating her next move. In the end, she brushed her hand over her own chest, treating Shepard as though she was a child. "Emma," she said, indicating herself. "I'm in the next cot over, your medic told me to keep an eye on you," she explained and sighed, shaking her head. "A-are you in pain?"

No, the pain was still at bay, and thank every Goddess and Spirit for that.

Emma tried for a third time. "Can you tell me who you are?"

The woman didn't seem like a threat and every instinct in her body telling her that the stranger meant her no harm, but Shepard remained just as tense. She coughed again, trying to swallow and moisten her mouth, though it was just as dry as it had been when she'd awoken.

"Re—" she rasped, face crinkling in frustration, and attempted again. "Reapers?"

Emma's face wore a distinctive relief, the kind that went beyond thankful her charge was apparently not brain dead, but also found a kind of peace that had been missing for a long while. Shepard knew the answer before the woman responded.

"Dead," she said, a soft smile forming.

Shepard, despite how much it went against every ounce of training she'd endured, shut her eyes and relaxed into the bed. She let those tears out that had formed before but not fallen, chest heaving with the comforting solace of a job done, a mission completed, and some semblance of life restored for those that were left.

Her guard down, Shepard stayed like that until there was once again the gentle nudge to her shoulder.

"I'm going to get someone, alright?"

"Please," Shepard responded, and reached out before the woman could leave, grasping at her shirt, fingers tangled in the fabric. She met the woman's eyes.

"What year is it?"

"Year?" Emma blinked, a glance given between Shepard and the hand that joined them. "2186. You haven't been out _that_ long. It's only been a couple days."

There was no guarantee. It could all be a lie, a trick by Cerberus or the Reapers or anyone else. Maybe somewhere in the galaxy there were even more of her bodies stored, simply needing a data dump of her brain's synapses and pathways, but for the time being, Shepard chose to believe that the body she had taken to London was the one she still wore.

Her hand released its tight grasp on the stranger's shirt, eventually going limp and dangling off the edge of her bedside. Weary, Shepard fought the urge to sleep to get her last words out. "I…will you be here when I wake up?" She didn't know the woman's story, why she was there, or how she'd been tasked to be her keeper, but in the minutes she'd known her, she'd grown bonded, like a young animal imprinting on the parental figure it followed about in its early days.

Though her eyes were wide, bewildered even, Emma nodded. She took Shepard's hand from where it hung and lifted it back onto the side of the cot, tucking it beside Shepard while her eyelids fell shut.

"I'll be here."

—

The second time she woke, it wasn't to the comforting cloud of pain relief, but rather the exact opposite. She wasn't even fully awake, eyes still closed, when she let out her first yell as a direct reaction to the agonizing fire spreading from her left lower arm and up towards her shoulder. Of course, it did mean her limb was still attached, so there was that.

"Stay still," someone chastised, and the pain crept further.

"Please," she implored the man's figure as she opened her eyes, "I can't—" her breathing was short and quick, not taking enough oxygen as she strived to breathe through the pain. "Fuck, fuck—Jesus Christ! Stop, I can't—"

"You were much better when you were _unconscious_ ," the man groused, continuing on his work, and though Shepard could see, she was only barely able to make him out through the thick tears in her eyes brought on by the excruciating hurt.

She'd felt extreme pain before, or at least she'd thought she had. There'd been bullet wounds and broken bones, bruises and migraines. Then there'd been that whole dying thing, the distress of suffocation she could still recall from the memories gifted to her, but nothing, not anything she'd ever felt before, compared to this. She felt like she was being flayed alive.

The woman who had previously identified herself as Emma pressed a cold hand to Shepard's cheek, trying to direct her attention away from what the other was doing. "He's just changing the bandages," she said, attempting to put her at ease, sympathy in her gaze.

Shepard wept openly. Before, there'd always been something for the pain. Kaidan with a medpack, Chakwas with some miracle pill. It was like every ounce of pain she'd ever been relieved of in her life before had come back to her all at once, direct and focused on her left side.

"Your burns are pretty severe," the medic said, cleaning the flesh where it was raw and open and then applying a cream before fitting the sleeve of a bandage around her arm. "Infection's the big worry for someone like you. Gets into your blood and then you've got sepsis and coming back from that with what little we've got right now… it's damn near a death sentence." He sighed loudly and ripped open a new package, beginning the process all over again at Shepard's neck and lower cheek, this time with greater care. "Normally you'd be in a burn center, you'd have doctors for this kind of thing, a couple plastic surgeons trying to minimize scarring and tissue damage, already fast-tracking your own skin cultures in some lab."

She could feel when the packing at her throat was removed, cool air both soothing and stinging her skin, and she tried to stifle the cries, the shake of her body. It only made things worse.

"But you've got me," he announced. "RN from a red sand rehab clinic. And right now we've got antibiotics, some ointment, and gauze. That's a good day as far as things have been lately, but it means fuck all for you. So we're going to keep you clean and hope your body can make do on top of everything else you've got, and if you walk away with use of your arm—I'll consider it a fucking Godsend. Hey," he attached the bandage, lining the edges with tape from her cheekbone on down, "you're all done for today. Congratulations."

"Work on your bedside manner," she cracked even through heavy breaths. The pain was receding, now just a dull roar rather than a sharp shriek, which made it manageable for the time being.

"When someone starts paying me, I will," he grunted, and after the crinkling of used packaging was discarded, he pulled up a data pad, its screen cracked but still functioning. "You lucid enough to hear the rest of the damage?"

Shepard gasped, "there's _more_?"

"You've got no idea. Burns on 18% of your body, confined to the left side. Fractured fibula," he tapped the edge of the data pad to the hard casting on her lower left leg concealed beneath the blanket. "Dislocated shoulder—we popped that right back in for you, no charge. Concussion," the medic nodded to her, "not to mention the hematomas, contusions, abrasions, and one heck of a nasty cut across your head." He stopped, then added, "sorry about the hair, by the way. Hope you weren't attached to it."

Shepard felt at her face, starting from her forehead and moving upwards towards her scalp. The right side was business as usual, matted and knotted hair ever present, if grease and blood laden, but the left side was an entirely different story. It had been overzealously shaved in large sweeps, another bandage following down towards behind her ear.

"…When they dragged you in here," he was shaking his head dismissively, the kind of expression one used to denote someone on death's door—she'd seen it on a few doctor's faces on the Citadel when they'd brought Kaidan in, "no one thought you were going to make it through the night, especially not your—"

"— _Henry_ , she can deal with the rest later." Emma finally cut in, a deliberate glance in his direction. The nurse raised a shrugged shoulder and set his focus back on Shepard.

"We're running low on the painkillers you're allowed to have. As bad as you are right now, there are some people worse that we're just keeping comfortable, so you'll have to deal with it." Henry said nothing else, gathering up his bare bones carryall of supplies before moving on, leaving the data pad behind. Shepard moved to grasp it in her functioning hand, but Emma had it first, setting it aside and out of reach. Her brows knitted together at the woman's behavior, but Shepard let it go. It hurt too much to protest, anyway.

"Hungry?"

Shepard shook her head. She didn't know what had been sustaining her the last few days, if they'd been pumping her with liquid nutrition or what, but her stomach wasn't interested as it was.

"Well that's too bad," the woman replied and fished under Shepard's cot. She returned with a can of something, by the label it was a protein shake, the kind the military usually passed out to its soldiers for breakfast to fill their bottomless stomachs a little more. Emma cracked the top open and added the straw, normal sized and thus seeming far too gigantic for the small can, and brought it to Shepard's mouth. She didn't have the heart to resist, not at the woman's watchful insistence.

While Shepard drank, Emma talked. First about a few other patients and then about the reason why she was there—her own broken arm had brought her to the tiny field hospital, and waiting for transport north had kept her on as a volunteer in the meantime. They were in a tent, or a series of them really, two hundred or so patients with two doctors for all of them, a couple of nurses who were just as valuable these days. Henry, she reassured, was one of the best.

She finished, and Emma, untrusting, shook the can to test for any remains. It reminded Shepard of her mother when she was a child and prone to avoiding finishing her milk, her vegetables. Already, her stomach felt unsettled at the sudden invasion of nourishment.

"The fleet?" Shepard asked, trying to steer the conversation in a certain direction. "How much is left?"

Emma helplessly shrugged her shoulders as she disposed of the can, but kept the straw on the side table, likely to sanitize and reuse later. Supplies were tight, after all. "I only know what I've heard. Relays went dark," Shepard's eyes widened, "but they're working on repairing. Anything that was in the system is stranded here right now, but I heard a lot of ships were called off at the last minute and fled. So God knows where they are."

She attempted to follow along with the woman's sparse information. Sword—Hackett was going to send them to a meeting point once the crucible was activated. If there'd been enough time, they would have left. The Normandy included. Shepard tried to lift her left arm, going for her omni-tool, but the pain stopped her. Fuck, she could only imagine the damage done to her implant if her arm barely resembled a slab of raw meat right now.

"Is there a… a terminal somewhere I can use?"

"You're not getting out of that bed anytime soon," Emma chastised. Yes, Shepard thought, she definitely sounded like her mother. "And they're few and far between these days. Got a couple in the camp. But if you've got people you need to try to contact… they probably don't have access either."

Her head hurt. Her _everything_ hurt. But that didn't distract her enough from the fact that Emma was right, even if she could get a message out, the people she wanted to reach wouldn't be able to get it because of distance or because of death. No, she wouldn't consider death, not after she'd forced Garrus and James back onto the Normandy, the rest of the crew already inside. She could still see the look they gave her when she insisted she finish on her own, the way Garrus had reached out to her until she'd backed away and began running. If she could have taken him with her, she would've, but the state he was in at the time… Shepard exhaled heavily into the stale air of the military tent.

"I can try to get some information for you, though," Emma ventured again, and watched Shepard with a curious expression.

"There's a ship, the Normandy, had a cousin who was a crewman on it," she lied. "Only family I have left."

"I'll see what I can find. But was there anyone else?" She tried again, prompting and pushing Shepard. "A boyfriend? A husband? Someone like that?"

It felt like the inquisition, but Shepard just shook her head against the pillow and kept things simple. "No, not anymore."

The woman had those sad eyes, depressed at the corners, almost pitying, and it reminded her of that final look Liara had given her at the Alliance's temporary base of operations. There was something else there, but like before, Shepard didn't want to know. Anything else would just be too much.

"I don't mean to be—but, do you think I can be alone for a little while? I just… need to think."

"Sure," Emma said, then forced a smile, seemingly coming alive all at once. "Of course. I'll be back later to check in on you." She backed away to leave, tucking the data pad under her arm to take with her.

"Thank you," Shepard added quickly, "for looking out for me. I… just, thank you."

A tip of her head was Emma's acknowledgement, and then as promised, she left Shepard to her thoughts.

—

The following afternoon, Shepard passed a rather pitiful milestone: being able to sit up again, albeit with some assistance. Her posture left much to be desired, hunched forward, her good arm cradling the mangled, bandaged flesh of the other. Beside her stood Emma, carefully running the sole pair of clippers the makeshift hospital owned over Shepard's scalp, doing her best to evenly match the short prickled hair on the other half of her head as best as she could do with only one arm.

"Not my best work," she said, and Shepard cast her a sidelong glance, catching the tip of the woman's tongue between her teeth as she eyed Shepard's scalp. "But you've got the head for it. Always wanted to cut mine off when I was younger, never brave enough," she said lightly, smiling as she brushed her hand over it, dusting away any more of the clipped bits of hair. Emma gathered the towel laid out to collect what hair it could, and set the electric shaver aside. She handed Shepard a small metal bowl with shallow sides and a flattened bottom, the kind of thing usually reserved for collecting medical instruments, soiled bandages, maybe even someone's sick.

Shepard flipped the container over to catch the mirror image of herself. It wasn't perfect, in fact with the scratches and dullness of the well worn metal, it hardly looked like her at all. It was more than that, though, and Shepard quickly realized the reason she didn't recognize the woman looking back at her was because she truly didn't resemble herself these days. It was one thing to feel the damage with her fingers, finding the tenderness of a bruise, but it was another to see just how discolored her skin was where blood pooled beneath, how deep her scrapes went, and even the generous amounts of bandaging.

She didn't hesitate, nodded her head to the bowl for Emma to take and hold, and then Shepard began peeling back the gauze fastened to her face, desperate to get her eyes on the extent of the damage there. The nurse— _her_ nurse—Henry had been surprised by how far she'd healed through the worst of the damage already, but Shepard had said nothing at the time. There wasn't an easy way to explain the kind of skin weaves she had without raising questions. Regardless, she wasn't ready for the sight, what with the cruel joke that had been Henry and Emma touting her skin's healing abilities. If this was _good_ , how had it looked when they'd first seen her? Emma touched her right upper arm in a comforting gesture, but it also served the dual purpose to remind Shepard not to idle. She closed the dressing again, hiding away the red and angry, weeping flesh.

At her hairline was another long bandage, and though Shepard didn't know what it looked like, just that there were stitches and medi-gel coating the wound, it reminded her instantly of the body of the first Shepard they'd found in Chronos station. Her head had been cracked open and resealed, though for sinister purposes rather than a wound obtained in battle. With the whole of her hair gone now, Shepard thought she resembled the likes of Jack more than herself, save for the lack of the distinctive tattoos, or plush, bright red lips. What would any of her old friends have thought if they saw her? Scars came with the job description in their line of work, and when Shepard blinked, she thought of Kaidan apologetically dragging his lips over her newly healed wounds just as he'd done to the other ones she'd earned in his absence, learning the feel of the new her.

Emma cleared her throat. "You alright, dear?"

Shepard winced, covered the half of her unburned face with her hand as the answer.

"The wounds will heal," the woman calmly reassured.

Inclining her head back towards where Emma stood above her, Shepard asked quietly, "have you heard anything? The ship I asked about?"

Emma nodded at the reminder, and struggled with sifting through the pocket of her trousers. A size or two too big, if Shepard could guess by the way the belt was tightened at her waist. That wasn't unusual from what she'd seen of the other patients and volunteers that passed by. Emma retrieved a small scrap of paper, the ink smudged and nearly illegible.

"Put word out to a few soldiers," she supplied, turning the paper round until the letters were correctly positioned. "SSV Normandy—"

Shepard could already hear the words in her head. _Destroyed during final assault. Collision with another vessel. Whereabouts unknown. Ship found, no life signs, crew presumed dead_. But Emma continued on with that nervous tick in her throat, stopping to clear her voice every few words.

"Stranded in Horse Head Nebula, location classified. Comm—Communication?" She questioned the abbreviation, looking to Shepard for guidance before. "Via QEC—I'm not sure what that is. Beginning repairs. No reported casualties."

Garrus had needed medical help, she told herself. Had she not called for the Normandy to evac them, he wouldn't have stood a chance down on that battlefield, even laying in cover, waiting for someone to come along. He'd needed Chakwas and she'd made the call to save him. But if she'd put him on that ship with all the rest only to die an hour later—her thoughts had been so loud that Shepard had nearly missed Emma's proud delivery of the gathered news. Shepard's head shot up.

"They're okay?" She questioned in disbelief.

Emma laid her hand over Shepard's on the bed. "As far as we know, your cousin is okay."

Shepard was regretful for the lie, especially to do so to a woman who had only offered help without asking for anything in return, but the feeling of genuine relief outweighed all the rest. They were _alright_. The Alliance, the Turian hierarchy, maybe even the Flotilla, would be looking for them. She didn't know what it meant for when they returned, not with how things had been left between her and those that new the truth, but Shepard imagined there'd be one hell of an Alliance-led interrogation and debriefing when she notified them of where she was, and then at the end, a lot of drinking. A lot of laughing. Maybe just enough to make the rest of the horrible truths not matter so much for a small time.

She felt her cheeks pulling into a lopsided smile, the left side of her face fighting too much movement, but she grinned through the throbbing discomfort anyway.

A boy, a young teenager that had to grow up far too fast in this war, came by with a weighted box under one arm. To the beds across from her own, he doled out the identical rations delivered twice daily. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get by, and furthermore, it was simply all they were going to get. Each patient gratefully accepted the vitamin and protein shake canister alongside the prepackaged MRE, and Shepard would have been lying if she said her stomach wasn't already growing hungry from the unsatisfying ration bar and high-caloric sludge she'd drunk down earlier that morning. The boy handed off a can and pouch to Emma, and then with a glance to the number marking the foot of Shepard's cot, handed her a pouch and not one, but two servings of the drink, and kept on moving.

Shepard eyed the gifts bestowed to her, taking the second can in her hand and holding it out to the boy as he delivered the pair of goods to the next bed. "You gave me an extra," she said.

Emma hushed her immediately, tried to swat her hand down. "You need it," she argued, "your burns won't heal if you aren't eating."

Persistent, she spoke again. "I don't need special treatment." Shepard dodged the woman trying to interfere, extending it back in the boy's direction.

He shrugged a shoulder and spoke with casual insistence before moving on. "It's for the baby."

Shepard, for the first time since she'd woken up, actually barked out laughter. "You've got the wrong bed, kid. Now come take it to someone who really needs it."

The boy impatiently groaned. "Bed 32, they told me. You see that?" His head jerked back to the end of her cot. "You're bed 32. Now let me finish what I've got to do so I can get out of here and eat my own dinner."

She didn't fight after that, just let the boy go on his way as she lowered her arm to the cot, both out of exhaustion and her willingness to give in. She watched the teen continue to work methodically, down the rest of the rows and then out through the flaps of the tent and into the one adjacent. Shepard whipped her head back around to Emma, trying again to laugh, though this time it was forced. "Some other woman's going to be needing this," she said, and offered the can to the more mobile woman. "Make sure she gets it."

Emma said nothing, just watched Shepard carefully and though she reached for the drink like she was to take it, she merely folded Shepard's grip back around it and pushed it towards her. "I'll make sure to tell someone," she hesitated, "but you should drink it since you have it."

Shepard pushed it back at Emma's hand, grinding her teeth together. "No. No, I really shouldn't. I don't need it, I heal fast and I'm not—"

The other woman swallowed, throat bobbing, and ducked her head to avoid Shepard's accusing eyes. Shepard went absolutely still, the breath sucked from her lungs for half an instant before she was compensating, nearly hyperventilating at the implication the other woman's avoidance held. "No," she repeated in consternation, voice growing louder with each syllable. " _No_."

"Take it easy," Emma said, palms up in a show of surrender and compliance. "We'll get it sorted out." A few nearby patients lifted their heads at the disturbance, the sudden raise of volume in the otherwise usually quiet atmosphere.

Shepard felt hot all over, like the chills had just faded away in a particularly bad bout of the flu and left her body to feel the few degrees above normal. Her pulse, well, she could hear it in her ears, felt it jumping and twitching in her limbs, sweat at her brow and the creases of her joints, wherever skin met skin. _No_. There was nothing logical about it, nothing that made sense. Beyond the biology of it, the fertility suppressants both she and Kaidan _should_ have been on… the reality of such a situation made her stomach roll. Had there been anything in it, she was certain she would have heaved the contents over the dirt floor, her legs, the blanket. Instead, the nausea just swept in and settled at home in her throat and gut. She threw the can to the floor, and it was a testament to how little strength she had that it didn't open, didn't even end up dented.

"No. Not me. Not now. Not fucking ever," she maintained, as though the firmer she spoke, the truer it would become. Maybe that was another gift Cerberus had instilled her with: the ability to make things real if she believed them enough. They had almost, after all, when they'd convinced her she had been the real deal, the Commander Shepard.

In the middle of the altercation—if it could have even been called that, Shepard was in no position to be engaging in fisticuffs with anyone, even a middle-aged civilian woman—Henry cut in through the tent's doorway, alerted by the commotion.

"Everything okay…?" He questioned, keeping his distance, body language screaming that he was wary of getting involved at all. Though nurse and caregiver he was, peacekeeper was not in the job description.

"It's fine—"

"No it's not," Shepard hissed, and turned towards the only medical professional that had visited since she'd woken. "I need you to tell me, I need you to tell me I'm _not_ pregnant."

There was that look again—the one she had seen between Henry and Emma the day before, the one that said so much without saying anything at all. She hadn't known the code then, hadn't been aware of the topic at hand, but now she felt like a fool when it stared her in the face.

"And what? You both were just going to not tell me until—until—" Her hand balled into a fist full of the bed sheet, fingers going white at the pressure. "Until I gave birth? What was the god damn plan?"

"Until you had been conscious for more than three days," Emma tried to justify.

"Well you're all wrong. Do the test again."

"You think we're even set up for something like that?" Henry motioned around him wildly. "Because we've got so much staff and equipment lying around—for Christ's sake, the world has changed."

"Do it," she said through a clenched jaw, "again."

"Look," he sighed in exasperation and moved around her bed, quickly sifting through the small amount of supplies, belongings. On Emma's nearby cot, he found the cracked data pad he sought, scrolling through the partially malfunctioning screen to draw up the records belonging to the particular patient in bed 32. "Managed to get you a scan when they brought you in. Showed some internal bruising, your broken leg. Also showed us that while you were concussed, you weren't in danger of an aneurism, rupturing something. And it showed," he tilted the screen towards her, swiping at the glass until it zoomed in on the vaguely humanistic form. "Pregnant. Somewhere in the first trimester. Don't know more than that since we weren't looking for it and we _definitely_ don't have the tech to find out, not here."

It could have been anyone else, she told herself as a comfort. Technology had come a long way even since she was just a child, but her face wasn't attached to the scan, no discerning outer marks. Of course, there was the fractured bone in her leg, the other injuries that matched, but still she refused to acknowledge it. No. They were wrong.

"These things…" Henry started, sensing her aversion to the matter entirely, "they can run their course sometimes, yeah? So if this isn't… it's early, the shape you're in… it may not last, anyway."

It was a hollow solution. She didn't want to be pregnant so she should hope that it eliminated itself? Shepard wanted it to never have existed to _begin_ with, and the potential that maybe sometime in the next days or week it would bleed out of her and for that she should be happy to endure that pain, wasn't sufficient. To be honest, no answer but the one that she couldn't have, would ever have been enough. It wasn't good enough, and from her crew and friends, she had never accepted the bare minimum. But these weren't her people, this wasn't her show to run.

If her legs would have behaved properly, she'd have been on her feet and out the door, not that her plan would have gone much further than that. A panic built in her lungs and throat, the same way it had when she'd had to make the mag-boot walk to the Geth ship, reliving—what she'd thought at the time—was her death before her eyes. The voice of her friends in her ear had been the only thing that had pushed her through that, kept her moving forward, kept her from screaming out and checking the back of her O2 line when that walkway had torn apart. But here she was, alone even with the others around. Completely, utterly, and to herself.

Lightheadedness crept into her skull, and Shepard shook her head without control or finesse. "Listen… I—I can't. No way. I shouldn't even be able—" _Kaidan_ , she thought, and had to close her eyes for fear of giving even more away than she already had. There was no question as to who the father was—although the horrific idea that Cerberus had somehow done something or that the Catalyst and Reapers may have done more to her than piss her off and rip her to shreds while she was up in the Citadel, did cross her mind.

Maybe two weeks ago she would have quietly, and privately, let herself think of the possibility of life post-war, post-Reapers, post-every-fucking-thing, and that life may have included children, but the reality that she wasn't who she'd thought she was had made a rather gigantic kink in the plan. She and Kaidan, they'd never talked about family or settling down, though every so often he'd mentioned his parents and Vancouver, his open ended sentences always finishing with that he'd like to take her there. Someday. Eventually. But that was then, when she had been Shepard, and this was now, when they both knew she was not.

Someone splayed their hand across her back and Shepard lifted her head, wanting to see a familiar face to help her whether through the storm. Garrus. That was who she wanted to see right now, offering his support even if maybe she wasn't sure she deserved it.

"I'm sorry," Emma said, and though Shepard knew she didn't mean it for not being who she wanted to see, she accepted the double meaning. "I know it wasn't my place to get in the way, but I thought it would be better if you could get your bearings first."

Shepard shrugged her touch away. "Please don't."

The older woman withdrew but didn't go far, instead pulling the privacy curtain shut to shield them from voyeuristic eyes and came to sit next to Shepard. Sometime while Shepard had been withdrawn, Henry had made his leave.

"Is that why you're here?" Shepard asked, watching Emma in her periphery. "Because I'm pregnant? Is that the reason you've been helping me?"

Though the relative stranger had been nothing but kind—barring the deception—and genial despite all the other circumstances, when Emma exhaled a heavy breath and allowed her shoulders to slump, her body relaxing as though a string pulling her tight and wound had been cut, it was the first time Shepard felt she was really seeing the woman. She was worn around the edges, and not just from her own physical injuries, but from the months she and the rest of those who had survived on Earth must've had to live through. Every hour of that horrible war was shown on her face.

"I'm here because…" a hand scrubbed over her face, "because a lot of people are here, injured, sick, some more severe than even you. But you—you looked like you'd been through hell and back. I don't know your story, what happened to you, I don't even know your name, but when I thought about the possibility that you wouldn't wake up, and if you did, you'd be alone after some of the things you must've seen… I thought it was worth my time for a few days. I've got my own daughters and I know they're safe—we were lucky. I'd hope someone would look out for them if they were in your place."

That was all she needed right now. A new layer of guilt, this time from a stranger who had come out of the blue to give support where it may have been needed. Shepard didn't know what she would have done had she woken up alone—torn her IV out and tried to walk out of there, probably, done more damage to an already broken body and hurt someone in the process, if not just herself.

"You've got time to think about what you want to do," said Emma after a moment of quiet. "Keep it or don't, though I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to find someone who can take care of it— _safely_ ," she amended. "Things are going to get better. Maybe not for awhile, but it'll change. If you do want to keep it, there will be people to help. You don't have to do it on your own."

There hadn't been enough time to even consider what she'd planned to do. Yesterday she'd thought the worst of the Normandy and her crew. There hadn't been a reason to identify herself as Shepard; it would have only earned her a place in custody with the Alliance, perhaps a warm meal, and the incessant reminder of who they all thought she was. Today, while she didn't know if they were well, she knew they were alive. And in that instant after hearing the good news, Shepard had something to reach for, a return to the only friends and family she had left. She would endure another six months of lock-up as they questioned her on what had happened in the Citadel if it meant coming out the end of it with even just one of her friends waiting. But the ball had dropped of course, just as it always did.

"Katherine," Shepard provided the name before she even thought about it. A couple decades earlier, it had belonged to her grandmother, not to her. "My name is Katherine."

Emma raised her non-casted hand, and though it was awkward, Shepard took it and gave a weak, lingering shake.


	6. Chapter 6

It had been a long winter and a cool spring, or at least that was what everyone had said. Space travel came with the side effect of having one's seasons suspended, transferring from one artificial atmosphere to the next, only getting to feel a non-ideal temperature when embarking on a planetside mission for however long. Mindoir had been an overall milder type of planet, with less extremes at both ends. It got cold and it got warm, but the days below freezing were rare. So Shepard relied on the people who were at least local to that specific hemisphere to guide her. They said it had been cold, and she didn't have reason to doubt them.

What she did know was that the sun that was sitting low in the sky felt blissful on her face. After a winter of blankets and fires and ill-fitting sweaters that had belonged to people no longer breathing, she had to admit there was a distinctive amount of peace in even feeling the need to push one's sleeves up without risking a chill. Her skin, as a result, was much pinker and darker than it had ever been, though that didn't mean Shepard spent much of her time as of late looking for herself in mirrors. The reflection was always never what she thought it should have been, always a little too much.

The back of her wrist swiped across her forehead, brushing away the short lengths of sweat-sodden hair in an attempt at keeping the dirt from her palms from her face. It was grown in now, short and usually in all states of disarray as the hair transitioned from shaved bald and into the cropped pixie cut that brushed over the tips of her ears and left the back of her neck exposed, but it was easy, and even Shepard had to sing the merits of such an effortless style, not that she had much of a choice. Hair only grew back so fast, though she doubted she'd ever let it grow long, having already trimmed the scraggly edges back and in accordance of some vague type of hairstyle she'd seen on a few women long ago.

Shepard turned back to her work, hands in the earth, ripping at the hearty weeds that threatened the newborn plants only just beginning to sprout through the soil. She looked down the row of seedlings, the line somewhat cockeyed from her vantage point, but her smile was that of pride at seeing the fruit of her hard work beginning to take root and show for her trouble. Without the proper machinery, farming was backbreaking work, the kind they'd only ever had to do on Mindoir when the tools needed were out for repair, but perhaps what Shepard liked most about it was the fact that it left her exhausted at the end of the day. When the sun set, she usually found sleep easily and that in itself was a relief, as it meant the details of the past had little solitary time to haunt her.

From further down the open field, a group of four approached, meandering exhaustedly up the incline of the hill. At the head of the pack was the youngest, a boy named Jamie that had celebrated his tenth birthday only the week before. Picking up the rear was his mother and father and uncle, looking just as dirt-covered as Shepard felt, though they wore smiles on their faces as they walked, laughing. It wasn't hard to find things to smile about these days, as the world was vastly different from how it was the year before. They were alive, and for that small fact, they were part of the luckier half of the galaxy.

Shepard raised a hand and waved, sitting back on her heels as she kneeled, relaxing the tired and strained muscles of her back in the process. "How'd earthing up the potatoes go?"

One of the men drew back the sleeve of his t-shirt and flexed an arm, a show of muscle, the manner that reminded her of Vega in the aftermath of a workout on the shuttle deck. "Annie's not going to be able to keep her hands off me when we get done," he joked, curling that same arm around his wife, kissing at the tangle of blonde, curly hair.

Annie let out a squeal of a giggle at her husband's hands traveling down to her sides, tickling her as they walked. She skipped a few feet ahead despite the heaviness that was evident in her at the end of a long day. They'd been doing this for months—hauling and planting, tending to what they could grow in the colder weeks while keeping their necessary supplies otherwise sufficient in a world that had little give as infrastructure was still being rebuilt from the ground up—but there was only so much endurance in a person after a hard day.

The little boy playfully hopped over the lines of plants Shepard had spent the day with, his wide grin spreading every time he passed Shepard by and she reached out to teasingly grab at his clothes, but always letting her hands fall a little short or slow on catching the ten year old.

"Careful Jamie!" His mother yelled. "Don't ruin all of Kate's work."

"I _am_ ," he insisted, and continued on by, his sneakers and edges of his pants coated in muddy soil.

"Sure you are, darling," Annie replied, but directed her attention away from her son and back towards Shepard as she pulled away from the group her husband and brother-in-law made while they continued their way back towards the main house. "I don't know how you do it," she said with a shake of her head, "don't have much time left and you're out here longer than anyone. When I was pregnant with Jamie…" Annie looked back towards where her son played, scampering off now in the shadow of his father. "I didn't move for the last two months."

Shepard laughed through her smile, and as though Annie's words reminded her of her own exhaustion and aches, Shepard wiped the dirt of her palm off on her thigh and then soothingly rubbed into the muscles at her lower back. That had been a constant as of late, something easy to ignore when she wasn't consciously thinking of it. "I like keeping busy, feels good to be reminded everything still works." She stretched her left arm out before her without even thinking, eyes glancing over the shiny scar tissue that shown where the sleeve was pushed up over. "Besides—I'd rather be out here than making dinner with the rest of you."

"After your infamous New Years feast, I think we'd all have to agree."

Past the silhouette of the main home on the property, a skycar whizzed by, engine loud enough to call attention to it. The first one they'd seen months ago had been alarming, but they were growing more common these days as things returned to some small amount of normality, a sign that life was pushing forward and moving on. Shepard furrowed her brow as the car dipped down and disappeared behind the tall trees and even the house, but turned her head back to Annie standing at her side.

"…I'll make sure you get the first hot bath if you come in before supper," the woman—and her friend—carried on. "So don't stay out too much longer, alright? You shouldn't be out here on your own anyway, not this close to the end."

"You're starting to sound like Emma," Shepard retorted, feeling a particularly satisfying tearing of roots from the ground as she ripped out a weed from where it had made its home.

Annie hummed, self-satisfied. "That's because, unlike you, _we've_ been through childbirth. And we know if it hits you hard, the last thing you're going to be able to do is hike a mile on your own back to the house while you're having contractions."

Shepard much preferred not to think about the impending childbirth, the event that would take the baby in her stomach from abstract to reality, even if she'd already been feeling it move and kick and force the air from her lungs for months now. There was a disconnect somewhere inside her, perhaps denial was the best word, where if she simply didn't allow herself to think about the future, it wouldn't ever really come. Until then, she could simply exist in the in between, a type of limbo or purgatory where the consequences of actions always loomed and approached but simply never arrived. She sighed, and pressed a hand to her hard, rounded abdomen. Annie was a few steps off when she raised her head again, and the sun was beginning its slow crawl to setting.

"You've got thirty minutes before I send Jamie out as the search party," Annie harmlessly threatened, and like the others before her, headed for the home they all shared.

Her body was cumbersome, but Shepard managed to inch her way down the row, returning to her work at nurturing the tiny green leaves and stems. A sudden chill struck her out of nowhere, not through her entire body, but one that was isolated, the hair on the back of her neck pricking up. Shepard had to stop as the uneasy feeling settled over her, and on instinct she returned a hand to her stomach, testing for a tightness of muscle contractions where she feared them the most. She shut her eyes and waited, one minute, two minutes, five, even seven, but nothing came save the subtle movement of her son or daughter. She sighed in relief, and went back to the last meter of plants.

"Kate!" She heard a voice call and immediately whipped her head up towards the sound. "Kate!" Jogging in her approach was Emma's oldest daughter, all of seventeen, waving an arm to catch the attention of the woman she sought. Shepard quickly and hurriedly pulled at the remaining weeds and finally, carefully, stood, allowing the growling pain of muscles and ligaments to stretch back to their proper shape and extension.

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Someone here for you," she shouted from halfway, not bothering to finish the trip on out when the message had been delivered. "He's waiting in the den!"

Shepard had had a few visitors before, but not many. People from the distantly neighboring houses mostly, looking to trade their own crops or seeking advice, strangers that had become friends in the aftermath of the galaxy-wide war, leaning on each other in hardship and good times. In a way, they weren't very unlike the crew she'd had once before, people with their own skills that helped the tiny community to thrive. It wasn't saving the world, but as Shepard had grown to see, it was just as important in its own way.

The walk back was long and tough. As usual, Shepard underestimated just how much energy remained in her at the end of the day, and by time she pushed in through the backdoor of the old stone farmhouse, a building that was centuries old by the architecture of it, she was out of breath. The kitchen was crowded with bodies bustling about in the preparation of the evening meal and Shepard squeezed by, rinsing her hands in the sink just long enough to clean the worst off. Annie's husband caught her arm.

"You want someone to go in there with you?"

Shepard's face crinkled at the question. Since she'd followed Emma out here, they'd formed a protective, knit group. It was a change for her to suddenly be treated like someone that needed any amount of _protecting_ , but she'd learned long ago not to take it as a slight,just a gesture of comfort. Still, it was an odd suggestion, and Shepard felt the tiny hairs on her body stand on end again. She looked through the doorway that led to the hall and into the small, enclosed den and entryway.

Her shake of the head was a dismissal of the backup they'd thought she needed, and Shepard precariously crept down the hall. Ahead, she heard Lily's muffled voice excusing her progress or lack thereof.

"She's a little slow these days," the girl said, but the other didn't respond, just shifted their weight, cleared their throat.

Shepard instantly knew that sound. She'd never be able to forget the particularly inhuman qualities of it all, from the menacing, but also delicate way a Turian was always poised on their toes, to the harmonic hum of his throat. She rounded the corner and stopped.

"Hi, Garrus," she said, calm and solemn.

He stared back, nearly through her, and said nothing. That visor of his—the item that had become just as synonymous with Garrus Vakarian as the blue paint across his nose and cheeks—was absent along with his armor.

Since she'd stepped through the front door of the house that had quickly become home, Shepard had dreamt of something like this. Someone would find her, wherever she was, and she'd be reunited with them in the end. She'd hoped for it deep down, and yet at the same time, she had feared it, never knowing what she would say if the time came. She blinked and took a breath as Lily left them alone, needing to be sure she was seeing the truth with her own two eyes. He was still there.

"Don't you recognize me?" She asked, almost self-conscious of the answer he could give. There were more differences to her than just the hair or the uneven patches of thick, fibrotic scar tissue that started below her left eye and crept down her neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. A movement in her stomach reminded her of the most glaring change, and though it was merely coincidence, Garrus eyes' dropped at that exact moment, glancing down to her swollen middle section for half a second before returning to meet her eyes straight on. Shepard's body shivered, feeling open and exposed despite the clothing covering her.

Though she'd heard of the Normandy's grand return, had even seen a video clip of the ship's crew being honored for their bravery while simultaneously mourning the loss of the Commander, their existence and safety hadn't felt real until right _now_. A breath she'd been holding for months was exhaled out of her, shaky and rough in her throat, a physical weight lifting from her burdened body. Her hand twitched, dying for the chance to reach out to him, to get the feel of her old friend beneath her fingertips, but Shepard held herself back, made no move at all.

Garrus' mandibles opened and closed, giving away his restlessness before he even spoke. "Can we talk somewhere private?"

It wasn't the reunion she'd dreamt of, but she supposed she'd earned that. Shepard nodded her head, biting over a scarred lip. "There's not much space here… outside, maybe?" She motioned back towards where she'd come from, and when he dipped his head in acknowledgement, Shepard led him on the return trip down the hall and through the kitchen. The people crowded there stopped, gawking as they offered quiet, reserved hellos. Shepard, despite what she knew about manners and introductions, simply whisked the two of them out the door.

Side by side, they walked down the low grade slope of the expansive field. Butterflies fluttered inside her stomach, the kind that was due to nerves and not the quickening of her child in those first few weeks of movement. He felt like a _stranger_ , she privately bemoaned, but the fault of such a change, she knew, only laid with her. The sun had sunk down below the line of trees behind them and the once sunny landscape was now bathed in the grays of the oncoming night. They didn't stop walking until the taller growing crops shielded them from view.

Standing with his back to her, Shepard saw the shift of Garrus' arms as they crossed over the front of his chest and carapace.

"How'd you find me?" She regretted her tone the instant she spoke, words coming out too angry and menacing. "The Alliance… I heard they declared Shepard KIA a few months back."

His head shook, fringe moving with it. "Everyone else was looking for you dead. I was always looking for you alive."

Tears wet her eyes and Shepard wanted to attribute it more to her hormones than anything else—they had turned her far more sensitive than ever before—but tears hadn't been a rarity for her in the last two days of her life as Commander Shepard. These were true, these were earned.

Garrus turned back around when she least expected it, caught her wiping away the moisture from the corners of her eyes.

"I found you by accident, actually," he confessed. "Farming isn't exactly something the average civilian knows about these days. This thing you've set up… it's had people talking. They said a woman was leading it, helping to teach people to survive out here. And somehow I just… I knew it was you, Shepard. I just knew."

"It's Katherine now," she corrected. "They call me Kate."

Garrus eyed her. "Kate, then."

There was only a few feet between them, but for how it felt, it could've been half the galaxy, so far even a single relay jump wouldn't suffice. Shepard took a step closer, relieved when Garrus stood still. She reached across, and let her palm brush over the fullest part of his chest, feeling him breathing. Shepard lurched forward after the first inhalation, throwing her arms around him as best she could, as far as her stomach would allow. Garrus folded in on her as an automatic response.

" _Why_ ," he said into her ear while keeping her close. "Why did you do it?"

Shepard couldn't find an answer and clung tighter.

But Garrus, his demeanor changed like the flip of a coin, gently but firmly pushing them apart, his talons and fingers gripping into the shoulders of her shirt. He wasn't crying, but if his physiology allowed for it, Shepard knew he would've been. Instead, his expression was distraught, mandibles spread as wide as they would go, the plates of his face downshifted in response. "You knew what it did to me the first time," he growled, "why would you make me go through it again?"

Shepard had rarely seen Garrus angry in all the time she knew him. It happened, of course, like the incident with Sidonis, but his moments of overwhelming anger were rare and never before had she been on the receiving end. It wasn't that she feared him, she could never, but rather it made her see the pain he currently struggled with, the kind that had to be so severe and overwhelming it led him to lose a little bit of control. She placed her hands over his on his shoulders and Garrus tore away from her after that.

"After everything that happened before Earth—-Kaidan—-I—" her tongue stumbled over the words. It was all a piss poor excuse when face to face with Garrus, even if she still believed she'd done the right thing.

Garrus whirled back on her, keening cry in his throat. " _Fuck_ Kaidan, Shepard! He wasn't the only one who loved you!"

The world stopped spinning for her. She had nothing to say, not that she'd been capable of coherently speaking before Garrus let the truth out. He turned his head away in shame, but Shepard was having none of it, and simply threw herself at him again, this time with more emphasis, more strength. She palmed either side of his head and tugged him down and forward, forcing his forehead up against hers. Shepard held him there and though his hands had remained lifeless, unsure of what to do at first, they eventually came to sit on her waist. Shepard nuzzled their foreheads and noses together in the typical Turian gesture, the one he'd wordlessly instructed her on during the one and only time they'd joined together as more than friends. Garrus relaxed under her touch.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, sliding a hand to the back of his neck as she dropped her cheek to brush over his own, further pressing their bodies against one another. Her lips dragged over his mandible, and though it was an action she hadn't done for well over a year and a half, the memory was fresh. "I'm sorry, Garrus."

He took no lead from her, rather just followed along, leaning into her touch as that sorrowful whimpering came out.

Despite the months between their last meeting in the flesh—for Shepard had spent her nights dreaming of him and all the others of her past—Garrus was just as she'd left him. Maybe a little thinner if she really looked, maybe his plates a little worn and rough, but on the whole, he was exactly as she recalled down to the feel of him under her hands, the scent of him that filled her nostrils. She'd always known she missed him, but until he was in her arms again, Shepard hadn't been able to admit just how much more that sense of longing trumped what she'd felt for everyone else.

"I missed you," she said, pulling her head back just enough so that they could regard one another. This time, she didn't try to hide the moisture in her eyes and Garrus, in the state he was in, wasn't capable of hiding what was apparent all over his face. He had missed her just as much.

They hung there like that for an indeterminate amount of time, and then Shepard acted just as recklessly as she always had. She closed the gap, and pressed her mouth to his. Garrus didn't miss a beat, hooking his arm around the small of her back, effectively pulling her closer and lifting her onto the toes of her shoes. One of her arms went around his neck, in the space between his cowl.

It was a mish-mash of Turian and Human behavior, some amalgam of mouths kissing as best as pliant lips could to hard plates, while their foreheads brushed and rubbed one another's when they separated for much needed gulps of air. That night before Omega-4 hadn't been like this, they'd been more careful then, more calculated until they'd both been left teetering on the edge, afraid of making a move for fear of hurting or annoying the other. Things had found a rhythm by the end of the night, a most pleasant and comfortable space for two different species to work together, but this was new. Rushed, eager, and desperate. For Garrus, it had been what he'd wanted again since he left her cabin that night. For Shepard, it had been at the back of her mind, close to the surface but never breaking free, blocked out by the memories of her other lover.

Her free hand moved up the side of his body, pulling at the hidden fastenings there, his tunic loosening over his trimmed waist and torso as she worked her way up. When they were all released, her hand headed upwards under the fabric, pushing and bunching the shirt at her wrist and forearm as she explored the once familiar plates and thick hide. Garrus purred at her touch.

She struggled free of his hold, setting back down on the soles of her feet as both of her hands made progress at the pushing and pulling of his tunic. Garrus helped, tossing the garment aside as he pulled it over head, but when Shepard started at waist of his slacks, he took her arm in his hand. Their eyes met.

“Are you… are you sure we should?” He didn’t look away, but from the way his head dipped downward, she knew that he referred to her stomach, the elephant in the room they were yet to even outwardly acknowledge. It was that reason and so much more.

Shepard proceeded anyway, even with his hand firmly around her wrist. “I want this,” she reassured. “It’ll be okay.”

It was all the permission he needed and he acted to make up for lost time, stripping himself down to bare before starting on her. Garrus knelt, prying off ill-fitting shoes and then her pants, the flickering of his mandible brushing her outer thigh as she stepped out of them and her underwear. His hands slipped between skin and her shirt, but Shepard distractedly dropped herself down, joining him on the bed of grass before he could get her anymore undressed. 

Where they were quick before, they came to a snail’s pace. Garrus dragged the back of his fingers over her right cheek first, the one that had made it out of the Reaper war unscathed, and then moved to the other, taking the time to feel over the unevenly healed skin. Shepard looked away, but he tipped her face back in his direction. He said nothing, that act of mercy was so very like the Garrus she’d always known, and then he lowered his head, meeting her mouth with his once more. This time it was gentle, just as careful he’d been with her scars.

She laid her hand across his naked chest and pushed him back, enough to get him to shift from kneeling to sitting, and when he was situated, Shepard swung a leg over his lap, straddling his bare thighs. While his plates and tongue affectionately became acquainted with the new skin of her throat, her hand fell between them, open palm rubbing at his already loosened plates, encouraging him on out. He groaned, a huff of hot air released against her throat as he emerged into her waiting hand, and Shepard started the motions of stroking him into a full erection.

Garrus pushed at her shirt again, getting it so far as halfway up her stomach’s widest portion, when Shepard rebuffed him again, pushing his hand away.

“I want to see you,” he complained breathily. “All of you.”

Shepard sighed, the muscles of her cheeks twitching and forehead crinkling in the overwhelming fear of his rejection. “I’ve changed.”

“Everything has,” he soothed, and Shepard could fight no more at the tone of voice he used on her, instead allowing him to help her with the shirt. She finished by removing the bra, he’d never been able to get the hang of the human contraption.

It had turned deceptively dark around them, the light reflecting off Earth’s moon the only light casting a glow around them. That hadn’t been the case on most of Earth before the war, where light pollution had been the norm, unable to get a real view of the stars that hung overhead. But this far out, and furthermore, with so much destruction all over still, all those stars—the ones she and he had lived among—were as bright as they’d ever be.

That darkness meant he wouldn’t get an honest view of her, and it was the only comfort that was afforded to her as Garrus took in just all the ways she’d changed. His hands roamed, a physical aid to his visual senses, mapping her out first at her shoulders and then down along the boundaries of her shape.

“Different,” he confirmed for her, palming a fuller breast in his grasp, his thumb passing over the hardened nipple, darkened skin of her areola. As pleasant as it was, it wasn’t made to last, and Garrus then let his fingers trace along the edges of where her burns were the worst over her arm and shoulder, where the flames had licked her skin the longest. She wanted to look away but couldn’t, not as he dragged his mandible over the new flesh, almost like a silent apology to her. For a moment, Shepard wondered what her recovery would have been like if he’d been there with her. He would have stayed at her side, she knew, wouldn’t have left even if she’d made it an order.

Against her upper arm, she felt the vibration of his sniffling, the nearly inaudible mewling he made as he surveyed the damage.

“Don’t cry,” she said with a palm brushing along the back of his skull. “I’m okay. I’m here.”

“But you weren’t,” Garrus argued, and that was true. For the months she’d been missing, she was as good as dead.

Shepard kissed his brow and moved her hand between them again as she shifted her weighty body, rising up on bruised knees over him. With careful direction, she could feel his tip press between her thighs, her moisture slicking him in preparation.

“I am now, Garrus. Now I’m with you.” With her words out, she settled down, taking him inside with one stretching, fluid movement. Shepard couldn’t help herself, she moaned like they were the only two people left on the planet, and Garrus did the same, his coming out against her breasts.

It took awhile to find any semblance of control and order, but Shepard eventually began rocking her hips over his, shallowly lifting and falling against him. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of room for movement, not with her stomach cradled in the slight concavity of his own abdomen, but for what could be managed, she did her best. 

From where she sat atop him, it gave her the rare opportunity to be the one looking down at him instead of the other way around. He was silver under the moonlight, the blue of his markings a darker navy. Shepard cupped his cheek, traced her thumb over the lines as they fell into the slow, easy pace.

It was heaven, the kind of bliss her life, albeit peaceful and calm, had been missing. Garrus moved forward suddenly, one powerful arm diagonal across her back to hold her to him as he laid her out on the mix of grass and clothing behind her. Their bodies never parted, and Shepard was glad for the relief he offered her at no longer having to play the dominant one of their pair. He braced himself above her for the final assault as he picked up the rhythm, spine arched sharply to give her midsection the space it needed, but keeping them near.

She was close and as Garrus buried his face into her neck, laving the skin there, Shepard’s hands dug into the soil above her head, fingers threading through the plush grass that had been growing anew since spring had hit. It was like time had slowed down for her, each rapid thrust into her now moving at a quarter of the speed before. In and out, in and out her body moved in response to his, and she could feel every centimeter that slid in and out, forcefully rubbing her inner walls, driving her closer and closer to that release that had been building, if she was honest, for months.

Her back rose off the cool grass and Shepard thought of that dream—that hallucination—that call from on high—she’d had before waking up in the temporary hospital. The other Shepard had sent her back, made her open her eyes and keep on breathing, and laying in that cot for the first few days of her return to the living, Shepard had wondered what it was all for. To suffer? To listen to the sounds of others in pain, dying? And after she’d found out the truth of the child she carried, she had thought that was the reason why. It was selfish of that other woman, she believed, to send her back for that, to be an incubator to the baby the first never got to have. 

There had been weeks, months, of being bitter amidst the small amount of joy she’d let herself feel, and even with all the time that had passed, there still now existed mornings she woke and wondered if keeping it had been the right choice. But now… with Garrus above, with the stars blinking down at her, and on the precipice of orgasm, Shepard knew why she’d lived at all. For this. She’d come back for this. To find love where she hadn’t let herself see it before, to know the feeling of being loved for who she was, not for who she’d once been.

Shepard cried out and came, the kind of climax that was felt from her scalp down to her curled toes and left tears down the sides of her face. Garrus noticed, nearly stopped, but Shepard smiled through them with encouragement and hitched her leg over his rear, bringing him in closer. He kept moving and not much later was he, too, finding that peace, pulling out of her and spilling himself on the grass under her thighs. 

Garrus laid his body down next to her in the aftermath, rolling onto his side just as she did, the two of them very different mirror images of one another. They stayed silent until they each caught their breath.

“What happened to you?” Garrus asked, and stretched an arm across, running his fingers along her exposed and scarred arm.

“Between the Citadel and Earth… I’m not really sure how I survived at all.” She’d tried to remember, tried to figure out a way for her to even be alive when the vast majority of the wreckage of the Citadel had remained floating out in space. Sure, some had fallen into Earth’s atmosphere, charred and burned up on entry, but of those pieces found, there hadn’t been survivors or even anything that resembled the remains of something that used to be living. Shepard… like everything else in her life, was an anomaly.

“Woke up in this field hospital. Broken leg, burned up my left side, one hell of a headache,” she brushed away the short hair above her forehead, exposing the jagged scar through her scalp where hair no longer grew. “And…,” she swallowed hard, throat bobbing, “pregnant, apparently. But I guess you expected that—Liara probably…”

“Liara what?”

“It’s just—back in London when we were saying goodbye, I let her into my head, you know? And when it was over, I thought she saw what I knew—that I wasn’t Shepard. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and I think she knew then, I think she knew I was pregnant but that there was no going back.”

“She…” Garrus shut his eyes. “No, she never said anything. Probably thought she was doing us all a favor by not knowing since you were missing. Would it have stopped you, if you knew?”

The answer was simple. "No. My life's been forfeit for a long time. It was me or the rest of the galaxy, how could I stop?" There was no question about it, and Shepard ran an apologetic hand over the side of her distended belly as though it could make her anymore closer to what was already a part of her.

"I didn't think I was going to keep it when I found out," she said softly, like words too loud would bare all the thoughts she'd kept hidden out of guilt. "But try finding a field medic who knows how to perform an abortion."

"What changed your mind?"

"I don't know." She shook her head and rolled to her back, arm tucked up to pillow beneath her head. "At first I thought it would be merciful to get rid of it because of whatever I am. I didn't think anyone should have to be burdened with me for a mother. But eventually… I don't know. I thought it could be a chance for a new beginning, and maybe I could do it with him. Or her."

Garrus sat up, reaching for their clothes scattered around them. His first priority was her, and Shepard gave her thanks with a nod of her head as he helped fasten the bra at her back. The shirt went next, tugging it down over her stomach in the process. He stopped, and Shepard could see him thinking in the way his mandibles twitched.

"Spit it out, Garrus."

He gave a reluctant sigh. "You should tell Kaidan."

She couldn't tell if it was the movement of her previously still child or the rolling of her gut. "No, I really shouldn't."

"I don't know all the details of what happened with you two… but it's his child. I'm not saying he comes first, I'm not saying it makes him a parent, but I'm saying if it was mine—" His throat caught on the word and he had to take serious pause before continuing on. "If it was mine, I would always want to know. _Especially_ if I thought the woman carrying it was dead."

Shepard felt around for her underwear, pulling them on as Garrus spoke. It was everything she'd been avoiding for months, all come back to hit her at once. Perhaps what was worse was that Shepard knew there was no ill intentions behind his words, and that maybe, even with everything that had transpired… maybe Garrus was right. Still, it didn't make it any easier to hear.

"We didn't end on a good note. I doubt he even cared when they declared me dead."

"You didn't see him, Shepard. While you were out here, pretending you didn't have a life before this one, we were _looking_ for you. Kaidan—he's been looking for your body for months, _needed_ to make sure you got the peace you deserved. I saw him after you died the first time, after she died, and this… he's worse off now than he ever was before."

Shepard had to turn away from him, heels of her hands pressed to her eyes to delve her into deeper darkness than they already were. It had been simple to exist here, being not yet a mother, being someone without a past. She thought of them all every single day, wondered how they were fairing, but she always hoped for the best. Garrus would find his family, meet a nice Turian girl and settle down. Kaidan, his parents would survive the war and he, too, would find someone to replace the woman he'd lost three years earlier. Tali would go back to Rannoch, build that house she dreamt of. James would become an N7, make her memory proud. She never wanted to think of the reality she'd seen on their faces in that vid of their honoring and her memorial, the sad truth that things wouldn't be as happy for them as she'd hoped.

"If he knows, Garrus…" Her arms curled around her stomach while she bent forward. "He'll hate himself more than he did just for being with me. I'm _saving_ him from that. I'm saving him from having to live with the reality that he has a child and it's with me, not her. I'm making sure he doesn't have to hate himself for it, doesn't have to hate his child. He didn't think I was a whole person, why would he think something that came from me was?"

"You can't really believe that."

"And what do I tell my child when her father doesn't want anything to do with her? I'm all she's got, I'm not… I won't set her up for that kind of pain from the start."

"It's going to eat you alive, Shepard."

"Yeah," she helplessly shrugged. "But maybe it already has."

She didn't see him, but could hear him shifting, standing, pulling the rest of his clothes on as quietly as possible. When he rounded about her to offer his hands, he wasn't as neat as when he'd arrived, but it was passable. Shepard stood up with his help, and just as she'd let him undress her, she let him help finish getting her clothed.

Garrus palmed her cheek, ran his fingers slowly through her cropped hair, learning the different feel of it in his grasp. "I like your new fringe," he said. "I like it a lot, Kate."

She'd always been Shepard to him. The Commander. Even on their night together, he hadn't called her by the name that she'd believed to be hers at the time. Katherine belonged more to her than that old name had and hearing it from his lips… it meant more than he would ever know. Or maybe he did, and maybe that was why after all this time, he'd finally said it.

"Stay with me tonight," Shepard requested, fingers tangling at the hem of his tunic. She pulled him in back in the direction of the house.

As it turned out, she'd long since missed dinner and the windows of the home, only in the last few months having been restored with electricity instead of relying on oil and candlelight, were mostly dark. She'd never had the experience of sneaking a boy into her house in the middle of the night, but she imagined in some ways that this was how it would be. Save for the fact that she was 33 now—at least theoretically—and capable of making her own decisions. They passed through the hall wordlessly, but it was the first creak of the staircase that alerted someone from the den.

"Kate?" Emma called.

Shepard stopped, caught, redirecting herself towards the living room that was less for sitting and more for storage as of late, chopped logs and their emergency cases of rations stacked in the corners.

"Just heading up to bed," Shepard said.

"We saved you a plate if you're hungry."

"No, no, I'm fine." Lingering in the doorway, she waved her hand off towards Garrus where he stood, but rather than listen like he usually had on the battlefield, he followed behind her, peering in on the cluttered room. "This is…"

But before she could cover for herself, pull another Turian sounding name from the depths of her mind, Garrus was speaking for the both of them.

"Garrus," he supplied, and stepped into the room, congenially offering his hand to the woman that was but a stranger to him.

Emma, Spirits bless her, wasn't startled by the fact that the stranger remained, nor the fact that he was most decidedly alien in nature. True, other species were hardly rare on Earth after things had ended, but this far into the countryside meant they weren't often seen, especially not in the safety of everyone's homes. The older woman shook his hand, and introduced herself in reply.

"We were just—"

"No, no, my apologies. Have a good night," Emma said, motioning them off, but when Shepard turned to leave, she cleared her throat and spoke up again. "Kate—can I…?"

Shepard didn't know what to expect, didn't know how to explain why a Turian was at their door or furthermore the fact that he was now presumably going to be sharing her bed, or at the very least, taking a spot up on the floor of her tiny room. "First door at the top of the stairs," she told Garrus with a nod of her head, and this time he did listen. She waited until he made it up and disappeared inside the correct room before moving inward of the den. All she could do was hope there wasn't grass tangled in the back of her hair.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah," Shepard said with an unsure nod. "What is it?"

Emma pursed her lips, an expression Shepard knew well from their days in the hospital together. Those hadn't exactly been the best of times, but they'd led her here, and things were different now. The older woman simply leaned back into her chair and looked up to her, making eye contact, holding it.

"I know that Turian's face from the news… and I have to ask. Are you that woman? Are you Commander Shepard?"

She stiffened immediately, and though she tried not to show for it, Shepard knew her body language had already given her away. She'd been out of the business for too long, lost that poker face, lost her nerves for being such a good liar, which made for problems when the life she'd constructed depended on her still having the stomach for it.

"No," she said, and headed back to the doorway. "Not anymore."


	7. Chapter 7

Shepard slept well that night, better than any night in her recent memory. Sure there was the waking to use the facilities, even get a drink of water, but each and every time she woke disturbed from her sleep, there was a warm turian behind her to act like a personal space heater against the night chill in the air with his arm curled around her, keeping her close. Sleeping beside someone again… it was a comfort she'd missed very much. But come morning—and she knew it was later than she usually slept based on the angle of the sun from the sole, tiny window—that warmth was gone.

Shepard rolled from her side to her back, hand groping in the sliver of space that had been allocated to Garrus on the single twin bed they'd shared. He'd argued the night before, quietly, never above a whisper, that he could withstand the floor or a couch or anywhere else, but he also hadn't taken much convincing to end up spending his night on the edge of the bed while Shepard took the safe space between him and the wall. The sheets were cold and Shepard moved to her other side, staring out into the room as she blinked away sleep.

"Garrus?"

"Hmm?"

She spied him not half a second later after she heard him, and he was at the opposite side of the closet-like bedroom, a few feet apart from her.

"What're you doing?"

"Looking," he said, and raised the old leather-bound book that he held in his hands. She couldn't tell what it was, something she'd read awhile back and had never returned to the proper owner. "Seeing what you've been doing without me."

There was no ill will in his voice, but she still felt a pang of guilt as she ran her hand over and through her mussed locks, finger-combing them into some kind of neat order. "It's been…quiet," she said with a relaxed sigh. "Most days I can't even believe some of the things I used to do. Killing people? Shooting a gun?" Her head shook where she laid. "I haven't picked up a weapon since the Citadel and I'm happy to keep it that way for the rest of my life. But you… what have you been doing?"

Garrus set the book back down from where he'd found it atop her unmatched dresser. He idly took some of her laundry in hand, worn and draped over the back of a chair, and began to fold it as best as he knew how.

"I was here for a long time, looking for you mostly. I went back to Palaven when the Relays were up and running again, tried to see what I could do there. Went to go see if anything was left of my old home—"

"Your Dad and sister?" She inquired, hopeful, laying her arm across her blanket covered stomach. "Tell me they're okay, Garrus."

"Yeah," he said with a nod, "they're okay. A little worked over, but they're good now. Dad's even come back to the service, got himself a spot as a general in the hierarchy, mostly managing refugees."

Thank his _Spirits_. At least he'd had that, she thought. He hadn't had to suffer through the loss of her _and_ them, all mixed together.

"I have to say, these are definitely a downgrade from your old quarters."

Shepard quietly laughed. "Yeah, no fish tank here. Civilian life doesn't quite come with all the Cerberus perks. You know," she looked around, actually considering the space. "I think this place is only _just_ barely bigger than my old bathroom."

"And that's being generous." Garrus made a neat pile of shirts, complete with even a pair of her underwear, next to where he'd replaced that book, then began to look for something else to do with his hands. Wedged between the dresser and the wall were the components for what he could only imagine was a small cradle, the support legs unscrewed and taken off, the actual bed portion set vertical, small mattress half leaning out of it. Garrus ran his fingers over the carved, decorative edge.

"Found it in a neighbor's attic a few months back," Shepard supplied.

"I don't know a lot about humans and… do you have a lot of time left?" He could do the math in his head of course, but without an extranet search, he wouldn't have known the types of numbers he was looking for, especially given the different time cycles of their respective planets.

"I'm not _exactly_ sure. Things at the end were kind of a jumble, and I hadn't had my…," she stopped, censoring herself, "in awhile. I was on birth control at the time, it shouldn't have really been possible, but who the hell knows. Take some antibiotics, get exposed to something, turn out to be a clone with questionable insides and upgrades, and... Yeah. A few weeks, maybe. I'm right at the end. She could come early or late, now I just get to wait and see, I suppose."

Garrus paused. "It's a girl?"

"No, I don't know. Haven't exactly had the most regular check-ups around here, but I wanted to be surprised anyway."

He nodded absently, eyes adrift in the room, and Shepard would have given nearly anything to be able to see into his mind, to get a clear view of his thoughts.

"Can you feel it?" Garrus asked, mandibles flicking in almost a nervous fashion. "Does it move?"

Shepard blinked at the question. That was certainly the last thing she'd been expecting. Although they'd touched upon the very apparent fact that she was carrying a child, had even discussed the father and his lack of notice on the subject, talking about pregnancy with Garrus Vakarian… that wasn't something she'd ever even considered on her periphery.

"Come here," she said from where she laid, and nudged the blanket down until it bunched below her expanded waistline. Her hand went to the exposed line of skin below the tank top she wore to bed and then repeated the previous gesture but in reverse, this time moving that fabric up until the bulk of her belly was bare. Shepard pressed gently at the side of the hard roundness, delicately prodding the baby in to some wakefulness.

Though his expression read confusion, Garrus neared anyway, kneeling beside the bed on the floor rather than taking up what little room Shepard wasn't sprawled over and across. She patted her fingers towards the top of her stomach, marking a spot, and when he was apprehensive, she sought out his hand and brought it over for him. Deep inside her, the child squirmed.

"Feet, I think. Maybe knees. She was head down last I heard."

If it hadn't been for her hand holding him close, Garrus would have jerked it away. He nearly did at the sudden moving, the stretching and contorting of skin of her abdomen in time with the pulse of movement he felt.

"That's… disgusting," he said before he could even think, his words unfiltered.

Shepard just laughed, the loudest she'd let out in weeks. "I think disgusting about sums up everything about being pregnant, if I'm being honest. Cool, but disgusting."

Despite the previous trepidation, Garrus was fascinated with the process after that, even moved his hand of his own accord further down the side of her stomach. "Elbow?" He ventured.

"Maybe. Probably."

They didn't need to say anything afterwards, the two of them locked into a circle of cycling behavior. The baby in Shepard's stomach wriggled and Garrus moved his hand to find and feel it, eyes following as he did so. And Shepard, well, her eyes were on him, watching the rapid change of emotion over his face as the time passed. Eventually, though, the child's movements slowed and then stopped, and with reluctance, Garrus' hand slid away from her stomach, instead to find Shepard's hand within his. Their unmatched number of fingers interlaced together.

"Come with me," he asked, pleaded, begged. "We can make up whatever story you need. Tell the Alliance you had amnesia… whatever works. We'll get them to leave you alone, let you have your baby in peace, somewhere with doctors, a hospital, just to make sure nothing goes wrong."

Shepard squeezed his hand and sighed deeply. "This is my life now, Garrus. Not hers, _mine_. I've got friends here, people that treat me like family, look out for me."

"You still have family," he argued, hurt.

Her face fell. "I know I did… I do," Shepard's other hand made it to his mandible, soothing the hard flesh. "I know I'm not being completely honest with the people here, but everyone has their secrets. Here… I'm Kate. I built something myself, not just in Shepard's footsteps. It doesn't matter who I was before, or who I never really was. You know, the last few months I've actually started to feel like a _who_ and not a _what_." A beat. "I just can't ever imagine having to return to being Commander Shepard, I know I _am_ her in most ways, but now that I know that I'm not—I don't know—something just changed. It's like I could finally see with my eyes fully open."

"Then you don't have to be her. You can be Kate, we'll go somewhere else, just you and me."

"Do you know why I joined the Alliance, Garrus?"

He eyed her with suspicion, but shook his head. "No."

"Because after my parents were killed on Mindoir and the Alliance found me, I had nothing else. All my extended family were gone and they put me into a group home. When you turned of age, there was nothing they could do, they didn't have the funds or space to keep people who were legally adults, so they gave you a little cash, some leads on finding work or possibly going to school. Most people left and never amounted to much, ended up in shelters, shipping out to some colony near the Terminus to find any kind of work they could. Me… I waited until I turned eighteen and enlisted with the Alliance because there was nothing else for me, and because I wanted to repay my debt.

"Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if the slavers had passed by Mindoir and hit somewhere else. Joining the Alliance wasn't even on my radar. My parents had a good life, made enough money to get by and a little extra to do the things they wanted to, within reason. I probably would've helped, then taken over the farm for them when they got older. I would've settled down, got married, already had a couple kids by now. But you know… that isn't how life worked for her or for me. Our parents were murdered, so we became soldiers and saved the galaxy instead. Not saying it wasn't worth it, not saying that I'm not glad I did it, but all I can think about is that farm back home, and how much I want to get back to that quiet life if I can. Experience it for myself and not from someone else's memories. That's why I belong here."

The way Garrus hung his head, eyes avoiding her own, damn near broke her heart. He said nothing, just kept their fingers folded together, kept his breathing steady.

"I need you to understand that… that as hard as it was to choose to leave everything behind, I'm here because I want to be. I may have been a girl that needed rescuing, but I've never been the woman who ever did." Shepard forced herself up into a sitting position, a feat that was not easily managed, but she succeeded with just the same. She pushed the top down to cover her stomach once again, inching towards the edge of the bed and thus closer to Garrus. Leaning forward, she kissed the side of his closely fitted fringe, her fingers running along the opposite side.

"So stay a few days with me, Garrus."

"Is that it?" He asked, even as he tilted into her touch or the breathy vocalization of his flanged voice purred from the back of his throat. "Just a few days?"

Shepard kissed from one brow plate to the next, covering his face with brushes of her lips done in perfect symmetry. "You've got family that needs you. Practically no one has any family left at all. Don't waste it."

His hands found the fabric at her waist, fingers tangling in it, nearly securing the two of them together. "I can't," Garrus murmured, and there was something quiet about it, delicate even, that Shepard wasn't sure she'd heard before. No—scratch that—she had. She'd heard it when she'd put him back onto the Normandy that night in London as he pleaded with her not to leave him behind. He buried his face into her side, hidden in the cradle of her arm and against a bit of her stomach. "I can't, I just can't. I can't leave."

"You've got to," she fought against herself to say the words aloud. "You need them."

"I need _you_ too, Shepard."

Though her emotions bubbled on the edge of in-check and horribly spiraling out of control, Shepard tried to chuckle, as feigned as it was. "Nah, I'm just trouble, Vakarian."

Garrus, however, didn't return her pretended mirth. "I can't. I won't go. I won't leave you here on your own. You've always had crazy ideas, but this is the worst."

"I'm not on my own," she made her case, even if it was an argument based on semantics. She knew what he meant. "Listen, Garrus… You and I, I'm not sure what this even is. I'm pregnant, you don't need that burden. You've got your family to take care of, and your own to start some day. Besides—how could I make you stay here? There's nothing for you on Earth. I can't… I can't even live on Palaven. Where would we go?"

Very deliberately, Garrus made eye contact with her, holding it as the time passed between them, challenging her. "Ask me to stay, and I will."

"No," she whispered, biting at the inside of her lower lip, brows pulled downward. "I'm not that selfish. You know I'd never ask for something like that."

He threaded his fingers through the short hair on the side of her head, both pulling her close to him and to draw him nearer to her. Somewhere in the middle, their foreheads knocked together and stayed that way, pressed up against one another, their noses likewise aligned. "You've given your life for everyone else _twice_. You can be selfish. Just this once, be selfish."

She shuddered with the weight of what he was saying and shut her eyes in the wake of his suggestion. There was guilt there, for a million things of course, but for just how _much_ she wanted to agree with him, take his advice, and reach for what she wanted. The decision would be easy. Living with it? Not so much. Shepard found her head shaking against his.

"Spirits damn it, _stop_ being such a martyr. For Kaidan, for me, for the other Shepard, for the whole Galaxy. You keep saying how you want to leave it behind, then you have to stop talking about it and start _doing_."

The breath she let out was shaky, jaw clenching tight afterwards as she fell into some internal debate with herself. Take what she wanted, consequences be damned, or consider what she thought was right, even if it meant sacrificing what she wanted in the end. She'd always done the latter when it came to the things that really mattered. Sure, there were a few punches taken at reporters, a couple cheap shots at people on the opposite side of the fight. But in the grand scheme of things, they weren't much. She'd allowed some other small concessions at times, but they were always calculated and thought over carefully, like how she'd propositioned Garrus on the Cerberus-controlled SR-2, but had been fearful of finally acting on her desire. Had he not come to her quarters that night with his bottle of cheap alcohol, Shepard didn't think she'd have ever had the kind of guts to take that final step in risking their friendship over a romp. …But God how it had been worth it in the end.

Shepard sighed, and without opening her eyes or pulling her forehead away from his own, she just nodded into him, first shallowly and then with gusto. "Will you stay with me?"

Garrus laughed with the kind of joyful happiness Turians weren't exactly known for, the kind she'd heard only after he'd pulled her into the shuttle after the Collector Base, marveling in the rush of excitement to just be _alive_ after one hell of a fight.

"Yes," he breathed, "I'll stay."

—

As it turned out, in making a commitment of that magnitude, getting Shepard to break down and say yes had been the easy part. What followed was all the rest, like logistical issues regarding how someone of a dextro species could survive on a levo planet, and the even more complicated question of what lie he was going to feed his remaining family members and friends about where he'd be spending his time. Temporary, Shepard had said. It would be temporary until the baby was born, until they were better prepared to make decisions about the permanence of their lives together.

Though she'd been apprehensive about the reaction of the rest of the household to the notice that her guest had become more than just that, the reception had been surprisingly warm. At night, with the window cracked open to keep the stale air of the room fresh, Shepard had curled into Garrus' embrace and voiced her worries, that perhaps the rest of her friends—the people who had become her family in his absence—were only holding their tongues for her sake. Maybe it was true, Garrus didn't know if their kindness was only extended to him out of propriety, happiness at seeing the once lonely woman finding comfort in another, or perhaps because he was a reminder that Kate hadn't simply turned up out of nowhere. She had a past, even if they all weren't exactly sure what it was. What mattered, however, was that in the days that followed his visit to the home, he'd been welcomed. And that was more important, he knew, for Shepard rather than himself.

A week had passed before the stores of dextro-rations he'd brought along in his skycar had run from dangerously low to completely barren, but it was not only the prospect of his slow, starvation-induced death that finally forced Garrus to make his leave. He had things to do, plans to make, even an official request from the hierarchy to join in a permanent manner that he had to turn down. It had been lingering for months now, Garrus always waiting for a reason to shirk duty and not to heed the call. Shepard had finally been reason enough.

On Palaven, his father hadn't asked many questions, for although their lives post-war had made them closer than they'd even been in Garrus' own childhood, the senior Vakarian knew Garrus well enough not to push a man that had no qualms about pushing back. Solana hadn't been as easy going about her brother's notice that he was heading out again, not afraid to voice her concerns over his wellbeing, but Garrus had promised that unlike the last time he'd up and disappeared, he would be back. And often. Shepard had made him make that promise to her, that he wouldn't let her be the reason to keep him from the rest of his life, and Garrus hadn't had a problem in giving her what she wanted because he knew it was he wanted, too.

What few belongings he still had were boxed and packed, along with the small cache of her items he'd taken from the Normandy before they'd even reached Earth after their garden world crashdown. The word they'd received over the QEC had been that Shepard was dead, efforts still being made to find her remains along with what had exactly happened on the Citadel. The news had shaken him to his very core, angry and fuming at his Spirits for getting hit on Earth, for having to retreat when Shepard pushed on, for leaving her on her own. As for the rest of the crew, even Kaidan, they'd been much the same, and the tone of the Normandy had been that of a collective, widespread misery.

In that grief he'd gone to her quarters, not knowing what kind of procedure the Alliance would have for an unmarried woman with no family to speak of, and most likely no will that reflected any of the changes in her life in the recent years. Kaidan had come in halfway through the process, both of them at a silent standstill in her quarters, and without a word they had divvied up the small collection of things that had once belonged to the Commander. Kaidan had taken her dress blues, the photo frame on her desk that still bore his image. Garrus had taken a copy of and then subsequently wiped her terminal, not wanting the Alliance or anyone to find anything to ever use against her; the model of the SR-2, Turian cruiser; a few knick-knacks she'd purchased throughout the Galaxy; a couple pieces of handwritten correspondence that didn't amount to much.

There'd been a few other things as well, and as Kaidan had gone to leave, his arms full of all that remained of either of the women known as Shepard, Garrus had stopped him and given Kaidan the N7 helmet from Alchera, the framed dog tags that belonged to the original. Kaidan had looked at him, tears in his eyes, and Garrus knew that the Major had understood. Yes, Shepard had told him who she was, or rather, who she wasn't. It was important that Kaidan had the very few things that had belonged to the woman he had first loved, both of the women would have wanted that.

It was on the flight off Palaven and on his return to Earth with his life's belongings in the ship's cargo hold, that his omni-tool blinked and blipped, flashing at the receipt of a new message. He had half a mind to power the whole thing down, no longer wanting to field the complete inquisition that had been coming to him for days now since he'd returned to his home planet and made his intentions, however vague, to be clear. Garrus scrolled through the list of unread messages, past the ones that were confirmations for regular delivery of dextro-supplies from a few sources in the nearby area to where Shepard resided; past the ones from Victus and other turians from his past; past the—no, he stopped at the one from Liara. He hadn't heard from her in some time, and an uneasy sensation in his gut told him he already knew what it said.

_T'Soni, Liara: Received some intel you're headed back to Earth again. If that means what I think it does, we need to talk._

Garrus sighed, nearly closing the message before he took pause, and thought of the ramifications of not replying at all. Shepard… though he was sure she'd be glad to see another old friend, wouldn't want to be broadsided by it, just the same.

_Vakarian, Garrus: Not right now, but know that both are well._

If Shepard was right, Liara would know what he meant. He hit send and continued through his messages, stopping at the latest, the one received only a minute earlier.

_Harolds, Annie: Hope this is the right address. Kate told me where I could reach you. Baby's coming, been in labor for a few hours now, midwife just got here. She said to tell you not to rush back. We'll take care of her._

Leaving Earth, Garrus had of course known that Shepard might have her child in his absence. It wasn't that he thought he would be any real support or help, not with how very little he knew about human pregnancy. Maybe it was more for his good than for hers that he'd wanted to be there, even if it ended up with her sending him out to wait in the hall while she and those more knowledgeable finished what had been started all those months earlier. The very notion of proximity to her brought him comfort, and though it may not have been having her six, it was something.

The last eight hours of the flight had been anything but calm. If he could have charged onto the flight deck and demanded they burn their engines a little harder, perhaps offered to go down to the engine room and talk to the crew himself, Garrus would've. But it wasn't the Normandy and it wasn't his ship to run, so Garrus had waited along with the other mixed species of passengers, and when the ship had docked, he'd been the first one off. The luggage, the belongings, all of that would be taken care of through arrangements previously made, and so Garrus caught a shuttle on out, making the journey back towards Shepard.

He'd been checking his omni-tool incessantly, but there were no updates to be found. No announcements of a child born, no change of progress on her condition. That signified the worst to him, that maybe his fears against Shepard wanting to have that child at home were founded, that something had gone terribly wrong.

The sun was setting on the farmhouse when Garrus pulled up, in much the same manner it had been when he'd followed a lead and the feel in his gut out to the countryside, looking for the woman the entire galaxy believed to be dead. Though mostly dark, there were a few lights on, the interior of the home obscured by the curtains that hung on the inside. He didn't stop at the front door like he'd done last time, hesitating and unsure of himself, waiting for someone to answer. No, this time he reached for the doorknob of the old home, and finding it unlocked much like he knew it would be from his brief stay, he moved inside.

You could have heard a pin drop, that was how quiet it was. Every creak of a floorboard, every sound the house made as it continued to settle on its foundation after all this time, could be heard from where he stood. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to find when he'd arrived, maybe a few people bustling by, maybe just the encouraging conversation given to a woman on the cusp of becoming a mother. He'd expected to hear a baby crying, but there was nothing. Not a sound.

He never should have left. Should have insisted she leave this sleepy little village of homes and people trying to make it out here on their own. Should have called the Alliance, told them where she was, made sure she was taken care of even if it hadn't been what she wanted. The grief of the unknown, all the possibilities in all varying degrees of horror, were laid out before him. Garrus had scarcely made it through the entryway and front hall when he caught sight of someone else down towards the kitchen, their movements deliberately quiet.

"In the library," Annie said, but her face gave nothing away.

Garrus turned with a question towards the set of closed accordion doors to his right, and raised his hand to touch them, already hearing their near constant rattling in his head. Swallowing hard, Garrus stopped… and with a deep breath, slid the folding door open just enough to step inside.

A fire burned in the small fireplace, fighting off the evening chill that filled the rest of the house and the outside. The furniture—and he'd known there to be an armchair, a coffee table from his time spent in the home—was pushed to the perimeter of the room, leaving the small couch along the back wall and the square of flooring in the center of the room open. Towels and cuts of cloth were piled in one corner beside a basin of water, and it took him a moment to realize the streaks and stains of red across the fabric weren't merely part of the decoration, but rather, blood. Not blue like his, like he'd always known. Red blood, human blood.

Taking up most of the rest of the floor space was a barely covered mattress, presumably pulled down from one of the many beds upstairs. Emma looked up from where she sat on the floor beside the mattress, and it was only then that Garrus took the time to realize what he'd thought had been nothing but a bunch of rumpled blankets piled together on the makeshift bed, was a person beneath it, lying on their side, back given to him. He saw the hair now, short and unlike all the other women in the home, and distinctly Shepard. Kate.

The body didn't move. Garrus thought he was going to be sick.

Emma brushed her hand across a part of Shepard he couldn't see from his current angle. Her face, he thought. She was touching her cheek. Not a few seconds later did the matriarch of the household stand, stopping to gather a few of the most soiled towels, placing them into a cleaner one for easy carrying. She slipped by Garrus, offering only a smile, and then left, closing the doors behind her, leaving him alone.

"Come to see him?" The formerly still and quiet body said, and though Garrus was positive he'd dreamt it, the slight shift of her form strewn out across the mattress reassured him otherwise.

Spirits. Bless every Spirit, every Goddess, every God. He'd never ask for anything again in his lifetime, would never dream of it. She was _alright_.

It took no persuading for him to round the edge of the mattress, Shepard lifting her head as soon as it was comfortably feasible to do so. She looked tired, weak, and worn, and yet… she was smiling. Shepard was smiling, the kind of peaceful serenity he'd never seen from her—or for that matter, anyone—before.

Garrus couldn't recall the last few steps or how he'd knelt beside her temporary sleeping space on the floor. "Him?"

"Yeah," and then her smile grew wider, brighter. "I have a son."

With one heavy hand, she tugged down the outermost blanket that was draped over her. Beneath that formerly tented area, Shepard's arm—the one she was laying upon—was curled and cradled around her newborn. He had his own smaller, and by the looks of it, softer, blanket loosely covering him, but Garrus could make out a knee and foot peeking out, even a tiny hand that was fisted, resting against his face as he was turned in towards his mother, nursing slowly at her breast. Shepard soothed a finger over his cheek, watching him, and then looked up to where Garrus sat.

"I made this," she said in a bit of wonderment. "Can you believe that? I made a whole person."

The relief that Garrus felt would never know any words. If he lived to be a hundred and thirty years old, he didn't believe he would ever be able to describe the kind of solace that washed over him. She was alive, she was well, and she had a son.

"All the things you've done… I think I can believe this one."

Shepard was captivated by the boy, never allowing her eyes or hand to ever be drawn away from him for too long. She traced the shape of his bare foot and the baby pulled away at the sensation, but eased back, re-extending his muscles in the open space, no longer cramped inside his mother.

"How are you feeling?"

She sighed, dramatically and loudly for effect as she rolled her eyes. "Like a thresher maw ate me and spit me back out. But it's not so bad. I've had worse. Not sure if I'll agree tomorrow when all the soreness really sets in, but right now, it's okay."

"I tried… If there was any way I could've, I would've come sooner," he apologized, looking back down to the infant. "I wanted to be here for you."

"He came pretty fast. I wasn't really looking forward to two days of labor, so I can't say I'm not relieved. And you're here now," she said, momentarily letting her hand leave her child to reach towards him. She couldn't make it all the way, not without twisting her fragile and pained body, but Garrus did the rest, taking her hand in his, bending forward to kiss her knuckles. "That's what matters."

Between them, the baby fussed, turning his head away from the breast that no longer satisfied him. His tiny mouth gaped open, and though there was no sound at first, his face crinkled in a sign of what was to come. Shepard was quick to try to soothe him, touching her palm to his cheek to remind him he wasn't as alone as he may have felt, and while it calmed him temporarily, his instincts won out, a suffering cry piercing the quiet of the room. His mother scooped him up, nestling him against her chest with one arm, the other making a poor attempt at trying to help her up.

"Sit behind me," she requested.

Garrus nodded before her words were finished, already shifting to aid her in her struggle. He used his body as a weight to prop her up, pushing back against her gently, carefully, as he slid away the pillow her head had been resting on and slipped himself between her and the wall that the head of the mattress was butted up against.

"Mm, perfect," she hummed as his arms circled around her, her own arms busy with keeping her son safe and close as he was propped up against her chest. Taking the nearby cloth, she laid it over her shoulder, one palm rubbing small circles against her son's back, and every so often gently patting to encourage the extra air in his belly to come on out.

The baby, however, wasn't very interested in what his mother was doing. Though he'd calmed, he hadn't returned to that kind of all encompassing comfort he'd had while enjoying his meal, but rather was still letting out a soft, sad, bleating. Shepard turned her head in towards him, kissing the side of his cloth-hat covered head, then nuzzling her forehead against him, breathing the sweet scent of her newborn baby in.

"Careful," she said to her boy, even if he couldn't have understood, her hand hovering close while he lifted his heavy little head, straining the muscles of his still weak neck. For the first time since Garrus had seen him, he blinked his eyes open just barely, and he had to marvel at the expression the child wore. Whether it was his imagination or not, Garrus swore he had seen that sleepy, squinted expression before from Shepard. The boy looked in his direction.

"Can't see that far and clear yet," Shepard informed him, "but he knows you're here."

With his arm tucked between himself and his mother, the baby set his head back down to Shepard's shoulder, his mouth sucking languidly on the back of his fist. He blinked again, this time looking towards his mother.

"I can't believe something that big came out of you," Garrus said in jest.

Shepard tried not to laugh, but it was a fight certain to fail, and the boy lifted his head at the disturbance in his mother's body as it shook and jerked with laughter. A single wail left his lips, almost seeming like a warning, and then Shepard was offering her quiet apologies to him, the whisper of sweet little nothings to her baby. Garrus had always known Shepard could be tender, she was never the hardened soldier so many saw her as, but the level of quiet affection she showed her child was far above and beyond what he'd ever seen before and ever imagined.

"What do you think of him?" She asked, voice full with pride. "I should let you know that I won't accept any answer besides 'He's perfect.'"

"A little wrinkled," Garrus said, but ran his hand lovingly along her upper arm, a reminder of his playfulness. "A lot different than turian young, but strangely… very much the same."

"That reminds me." Supporting him fully in one arm, her palm and fingers spread across his upper back, neck, and offering generous support to the baby's skull, she tugged the hat from the boy's head. Beneath that piece of fabric was a thick, dark mop of hair, matted and sticking out all over.

"Spirits, you humans are even _born_ with hair?"

Shepard just grinned, running her fingers through it, pushing it back into place though it had no plans in behaving, returning to its formerly bent appearance. "Babies usually come with a little, but he does have a lot."

"If there was any question as to who the father was…" He started, but didn't finish, a regretful nervousness passing over him.

"Yeah," she agreed with a sluggish nod of her head. "He looks just like Kaidan, I think."

Garrus held her tighter. "Are you okay with that?"

Shepard didn't answer, not right away, instead lost in looking at her child. She downshifted him from her shoulder to cradle him in her arm against her chest. The baby fussed, wriggling at first but eventually easing, his tongue sticking in and out of his mouth, saliva coating his lips. Shepard ran a finger along the shell of his ear, perfect in all its miniature size.

"I started crying towards the end." She was quiet and timid when she made her revelations. "There were plenty of people here taking care of me, but I just looked around the room and felt like they were all complete strangers. It reminded me of the field hospital, alone and in pain and not knowing if anyone I knew was alive. You weren't here—" she stopped, grazed her hand along his arm for reassurance so that his guilt didn't manifest too harshly over his unplanned absence. "And I just started to… I don't know. The pain at the end—and I was afraid something was going to go wrong, that he wouldn't breathe or he'd already be gone, that maybe the Reapers had done something to me, that after how Cerberus made me he wouldn't be healthy or even _human_." Her head shook, and though she was looking down at her child, Garrus could see the tears spill down her cheek. He took the time to wipe them away for her but more came, replacing the rest.

"And when it was over, when he was out and they laid him on my stomach… I just couldn't stop. I was so happy, he was perfect, he was beautiful even covered in all that fluid and blood. He was just screaming at me, crying, and I don't even know who cried louder, me or him. Then they told me he was a _he_ and it got worse. I thought of Kaidan, how he had a son now and he didn't even know. And I was just inconsolable, even holding him, I couldn't stop. I wanted Kaidan to be here… I wanted him to look at his son and smile and cry with me, I wanted him to tell me I'd done well, that he was beautiful. All I could think about was, did I make a mistake? Should I have found him, told him? I thought about it all these months… but I was too afraid, Garrus. I didn't think I could deal with the possibility that I'd tell him and he would be horrified. So I told myself it was all for the best, that I didn't need him or anyone, that I could do it on my own."

His heart broke for her as she talked of the birth. On that ship, he'd hoped beyond hope that he would be able to make it there in time, be with her through the worst of it and the end. He'd promised her he would stay, but when she needed him, he hadn't made it in time, she'd been relatively alone. Garrus leaned forward, rubbing his mandible and jaw into the side of her head, looking down at the baby in her arms. "You did well, Kate. He's beautiful."

Shepard erupted into fitful cries at his words, turning her head in towards him, the tears hot on his neck. He was cautious of where his arms went, but he brought them around her fully, running along her arms and thus helping to hold her child as well. There was no shushing her, no way to comfort because these were tears of necessity, even he knew that. They were tears that she'd been holding, that needed to come on out. Instead, Garrus offered the low, soft vibration of his dual-flanged vocals from the back of his throat, drowning the three of them in the warmth of it.

The baby only put up with the jostling for so long, and soon, he too joined in on his mother's weeping, shuddering cries shaking his tiny body. It was that tortured kind of sadness, his wails quivering frightfully, lungs used to their full potential only hours after he'd become a part of the world with the rest of them. Garrus palmed the side of the boys head not nestled to his mother, palm to his cheek as he'd seen Shepard do earlier. Though it wasn't quite the magic touch he'd hoped it would be, the warmth of another seemed to at least quell the worst of the infant's misery.

"He really is beautiful," Garrus said again, just as Shepard's tears seemed to die down as well, the mother and baby inexplicably linked together.

She nodded, smiling, and then laid her head back against his shoulder, even as the sniffles persisted. "He is. Thank you… for saying it."

"Did you give him a name yet?"

Shepard hummed a positive reply. "Nathan. Nate, for short. I started using my mother's maiden name awhile back, so he'll be Nathan Shaw."

"Does it mean anything—is it after anyone?"

"I thought about it," she said quietly, "thought maybe David because of Anderson, or maybe my father's name, but I think I just want him to get to be whoever he grows up to be… no weight of anyone else hanging over him, no one else's name to live up to."

Shepard twisted suddenly at the waist, turning within his hold so that she could actually look at him, face to face. "Do you want to hold him?"

"Probably not the most hospitable place for a baby," he said, helplessly glancing to his arms as they went slack, knowing the roughness that lingered below his sleeves. Where Shepard was firm muscle but soft, he was rock hard, stiff, no pliable skin to give way.

"Sorry," she gave a shameful shake of her head, dropping her eyes back to her son. "I… I'm sorry. We haven't really had time to talk about all of this. You know I don't expect you to have to be his father or anything like that, right? He's my responsibility, I didn't mean…"

"Shepard—"

"…To make you uncomfortable with the idea—"

"Kate—" He brushed the backs of his fingers under her chin, tilting her head up, forcing her to look to him with her red-rimmed eyes. "What did you think I was going to do? Come stay with you, sleep through the night while you get up with him?"

"I don't really know what I thought. I hoped—" She sighed, shoulders slumping. "I don't know. What I'm saying is… it's not too late for you to change your mind, to back out, Garrus. This is," Shepard swallowed, choking on the words, "a lot to ask of anyone."

"However much you want me to be to him, I'm going to be. Now," and to solidify his point, he took the blanket the child had been draped in earlier, fitting it in his bent, but open and waiting, arm. "If he cries, you're going to have to be the one who calms him down because I'm flying blind here."

Shepard was skeptical, that much he could tell by the creases at the corners of her eyes, the line formed between her brows, but she gave in after her own silent deliberation, transfering the hold of her son into his arm. There were a few exchanges of words, like _careful_ and _gently_ , and then Garrus' soft, mumbled reassurances as the boy settled in against the carapace of a man who was a relative stranger. Nathan let out another warning howl that made Garrus grow tense and nervous, but Shepard was there, wincing through the pain as she turned even more so now that she was facing Garrus, sitting between his legs. She offered her finger to the boy's mouth, and though he'd just eaten, he instinctively suckled out of what was already a comforting gesture. His mother kissed his forehead, and spoke in hushed tones to the baby for a moment before pulling back to sit upright again.

"You've got it," she complimented Garrus, her free hand seeking out the one of his that wasn't curled around her child. It was her turn to kiss his knuckles, just as he'd done earlier when he arrived.

In his arm, Nathan was deceptively light, almost like there was nothing there at all. Garrus tried to keep his breathing shallow in fear of upsetting the careful balance he and Shepard and the child existed in, his eyes locked on the baby, watching as the boy looked around the room with wide, alert eyes. His heart clenched, or at least that was how it felt to Garrus. Never had he thought of having children, not in any real sense anyway, but somehow, he knew, this felt _right._ Emotions running high, his breathing became slightly unsteady, mandibles twitching.

Shepard, as always, caught on right away, and forced herself to rise just a few inches despite the pain she must've been in, and brushed her lips across his mouth before sitting back down.

"Did you mean what you said… that night you first came here? You yelled at me, told me that Kaidan hadn't been the only one to love me."

Faintly, Garrus nodded, the apology for his volume and intensity that night already on his tongue, but Shepard just shook her head, dismissed it before he could even get it out. "I…" he sputtered, sighing. "Yeah. For a long time." He didn't know why it was so hard to say the _word_ itself, but it was. It wasn't that he didn't feel it, he felt it in every inch of who he was, in every pump of blood from his heart to all the extremities of his body. Garrus had never felt that before, not for anyone that wasn't family, but it was also so very different from that familial kind of emotion, the kind reserved for lovers, partners, mates.

For the first time since he'd arrived, Shepard didn't allow her attention to be pulled back to her son. He was safe where he was, content for the time being, and so she took the time to put her focus on the turian in front of her.

"I'm never going to know if I loved Kaidan because of the memories I had or because _I_ did really love him," she began, but raised a hand to him, asking for good faith as she strolled down the memory lane of an old lover while with her current. "It felt real, it still does, but it's just something I'll never know. You, Garrus… you were her friend. A good friend, someone she trusted more than most, someone she would have proudly taken with her to the end of the galaxy, but she didn't see you as anything more than that. What I'm trying to say is… I love you. And that's something I'm sure of. I love you, and that will always belong only to me."

Unshed tears shone in her eyes yet again, but these ones didn't make him sad, regretful, or hurt for her. Like the earlier ones, they were happy but there was no tinge of anything else except complete, absolute, joy. Garrus suddenly found himself able to say the word he hadn't before.

"Kate, I… I love you, too."

Their mouths met but it wasn't urgent, just soft and lingering like they had all the time in the world. Shepard pressed her body tight up against his, only leaving enough space for Nathan, one arm around his neck and in the gap of his cowl, the other allowed to rest against the swell of his chest while her forehead found home in the hollow of his throat.

Garrus thought of the months he'd feared her dead a second time. It was easy to meet her here, to proclaim that he'd been searching for her, looking for her living and breathing once he'd actually found her. It had been hard to believe those words late at night, however, after searching through wreckage of the Citadel. Every piece of warped and bent metal he pulled away in the daytime left him with the fear of finding her body broken and lifeless, and night meant the dreams that came with those fears. A hundred thousand times, he dreamt of her death, waking in the morning to try to convince himself it hadn't been real. It would never be real. He would find her and she would be alive.

Tilting his head, he laid it barely atop hers, both of their eyes set on the infant as he fought off the sleep that pulled to him. Each time he closed his eyes, they stayed shut a second longer, reopening again in the moment that followed, until finally, eventually, Nathan shut his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

It was heaven, and not the kind where old soldiers met at a bar after they died. This was unquestioningly real.

"Garrus?" Shepard said above a whisper, but not at full volume.

"Yeah?"

"If I asked you someday… if I asked you to get Kaidan for me, could you do it?"

Garrus rubbed his open palm along her back, trying to coax the mother just as easily into sleep as the son. "I don't know where he is, but I know how to find out. Is that something you want me to do?"

"Not…" she yawned, going a little boneless against him as exhaustion overwhelmed her. "Not yet. I need some time."

"But some day soon?"

"Yeah. Some day soon."


	8. Chapter 8

"What was she like?" Emma asked from where she sat on the couch in front of the large window, each pane of glass opened as far as allowed to let in the night's summer breeze. Her legs were up across the rest of the couch, and seated on her lap was the littlest member of the household, pushing into his fourth month.

"Shorter than me," Shepard said, stretching out a little further into the partially reclined armchair, watching her son and the woman who had become something of her own surrogate mother. "Same hair, though. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see her and it's just startling until I catch my breath. She was nice, but quiet, except when she was around my dad."

Nate was a wriggling, uncontained little thing where he was, one of Emma's hands at his back and the other at his stomach to support him sitting up. His feet kicked, his hands moved without grace or control, and every so often he looked up towards Emma, lips half contorting into his own version of a smile. Emma smiled right on back and offered him one of his small, brightly colored stuffed toys, never missing a beat in the conversation. "Sounds a lot like you too, doesn't it?"

Her cheeks warmed at the implications the older woman made. Perhaps she didn't want to admit it, but she knew Emma was right just the same. Since Garrus had made their home his own quasi-permanent base of operations, she'd pulled out of her figurative shell. Maybe, though, that had a lot to do with her newfound motherhood as well. It was rare that she went a day without her cheeks hurting from that smile she wore on a near constant basis, and both Nathan and Garrus were to blame for it.

"Yeah, I guess so," she agreed. "She was very serious when it came to work that had to get done. Work before play, always. And on a farm, that usually didn't leave much time for anything else because you could always find something else to do. I used to just want her to play with me, to lay down and read a book with me at the end of the night."

"It's hard… being a mother. She probably thought she was doing right by you—but it's hard to find the right balance."

Shepard's eyes were trained on her own son, and though her arms were empty at the moment, she could still feel the solid weight of him in her hold as though he were there within them right now. It was different from the heavy, unbalanced weight of a large gun, and she was thankful that muscle memory was being replaced with the new one. The toy rolled from Nate's lap to the floor, his eyes following it as it came to stop a few feet away before looking up in his mother's direction with much expectation. Noisily, he cooed at her, grunting and babbling as though he actually possessed language. Shepard smiled.

"What'd you do? You just love to see me work, don't you?" Her words were out and already her bare feet were on the floor, bringing her towards the object her son yearned for. Shepard kneeled beside the couch and gave it to him, earning her a gummed squeal of happiness as he got it back within his untrained grasp. She ran a hand over and through the dark hair atop his head, and thoughtfully sighed. "I hope I get it right."

"I heard someone say a long time ago that you aren't raising your kids, you're raising your grandkids," Emma said. "I didn't realize how true that was until I had my daughters. The only person that's ever going to be able to decide if you did it right is your son when he's a father himself, but for what it's worth, I think you're doing a fine job."

She'd never ask for that kind of affirmation or reassurance, not even from Garrus, but it was good to hear it, she had to admit. A temporary weight seemed to lift from her shoulders, and with it came a renewed sense of energy. Nathan impatiently whined where he sat, reaching towards his mother, all other distractions be damned, and in an instant Shepard had him in her arms, drawing him close to her chest where his tiny fingers dug into her clothing and skin, mouth leaving a wet patch of saliva across the neck of her shirt.

"I asked Garrus to find Kaidan for me," she said suddenly, nuzzling the top of her son's head. "I think it's time."

"You know my opinion, I've thought it's been time since the day you told me Nate's father was still alive—" Emma raised her hands in a sign of surrender, a white flag. "I know there are things I don't understand, but I think it's been eating at you. At first I thought it was that you knew he _was_ dead, but now I know it was just the opposite. Even if it doesn't work out—at least you'll know, right? You'll know you did everything for Nathan, won't have to live with the 'what if.' And if it does work… well, your lives will be all the better for it."

It wasn't that she'd started to live life openly as the former Commander. No, it was quite the opposite. She was Kate, would always be Kate, especially to those she had met and grown to know since she'd found home here. But since that night when Emma had asked her that simple question— _Are you Commander Shepard?_ —there'd been something of an unspoken understanding between the two of them. _No_ , Shepard had said, but they'd both known the answer had been a resounding and obvious yes, and sometime in the first few weeks after the baby's birth, Shepard had confided in her friend and mother figure the truth of her son's parentage. Kaidan, the boy's father, was still alive out there. Alive and none the wiser. Now, the truth was something they didn't outwardly acknowledge, but came to talk of nonetheless.

Shepard extended her legs out across the floor, laying Nathan down along her thighs as she leaned closer and over him, bringing herself into his view. He pulled his feet up, even swiped a hand down in their general direction to grab at them, but missed. Shepard, however, didn't, catching his ankles within her hands and getting just close enough to kiss the tiny soles of his feet. Nathan gave his own cooed nonsense in response.

Emma brushed her hand over Shepard's shoulder as she stood to leave, giving Shepard the privacy with her son that was rarely found. "I want you to know there's always a place here for you, no matter what, so don't worry about that. But if you find a place for yourself somewhere else… don't hold back on my account."

"I know," she said, and because she couldn't manage the words, she gave a nod of thanks to Emma as she exited the room.

"Past your bed time," Shepard playfully chastised her son, a smile on her face all the while. "But you don't even know what that is, do you? No, of course not." She ran her hands from his hips on down his increasingly chubby thighs and legs, straightening them out for him before he pulled them back up, bent and close to his body. "Bet you feel much better right now that we've got some cool air coming in. For someone that found my stomach awfully comfy for nine months, you're one cranky kid when you get a little sweaty."

He gurgled, began sucking on the side of his fist, wide eyes never leaving her face. That look of adoration he wore for her, she would never tire of it. Though he tolerated strangers and even showed interest and affection for those he knew especially well, when it came to _Mom_ , there was one and only. Shepard hadn't been prepared for that amount of selfless worship, and in so many ways, she was thankful for the surprise of it. Shepard lifted him, cradling him in her arm despite how much he'd grown since she'd first held him in that position.

"My beautiful," she whispered, kissing between his faint, barely there, eyebrows, "beautiful, beautiful boy." It was moments like these where she felt most comfortable to behave and say as she pleased with her son. Alone, away from the prying eyes and constantly listening ears, she was at peace and ease with herself while her child rested in her arms, returning the feeling just as equally.

The months had passed in the near blink of an eye, even if every day she'd told herself to slow down and appreciate what she had, to remember every detail for when he was older and could no longer fit in the circle of her arms any longer. Still, though, he'd grown large and healthy on his mother's milk, a fact she was proud of, but also signified the growing distance between she and her son. One day, she both feared and knew, he would no longer need her, and by then, Shepard could only hope she would have taught him enough to be a good man.

"Do you want to meet him?" She said to Nathan with an exasperated exhale. "Is that what you want? Do you want to see your dad?" Already, there'd been many sleepless nights about her son at an older age, betrayed and demanding details of the other person who brought him into being. Those nights only paled in comparison to the dreams in which Kaidan vehemently denied his child, his actions and words loud and brash and _angry_.

Shepard took one of her son's hands between her thumb and forefinger, smoothing out over each digit, counting and recounting, marveling in the perfection of every line and dimple just as she'd done everyday since his birth. Perfect. That's what he was, even if she'd feared that he wouldn't be. Just like any other child born to any other mother, he was perfect, thriving, growing. And for that mercy, she was relieved.

Lights flickered through the front window of the room, the gentle thrum of a car engine. Shepard looked up and then back down to her boy, pushing herself up to standing.

"Do you know what that is?" Shepard cooed to Nathan, and followed Emma's earlier steps on out into the main hall and then to the front door. It was dark, but beyond the line of trees in the distance, the sky was still a light, though darkening, blue as the sun hid itself away for the night. Shepard lingered in the doorway, and from the sky car, she watched Garrus reveal himself from the open door. She extended an arm in his direction, pointing, and Nathan followed the line of sight from where he was held to her hip, marveling at the new distraction. "Papa's home."

"We missed you," Shepard said over the sound of her son's incessant babbling.

Garrus grabbed his bag from the car and made his way over, depositing his luggage just barely inside the home, but tarried where she stood. "Mm, I can hear it," he replied, ducking down to offer his hello to Nathan, a brush of his own forehead to the boy's while Nathan reveled in the attention. Shepard, however, was his final destination, and as always she was waiting for him when their mouths met together. Garrus cupped her cheek, held them both steadfast so they felt more like one rather than two. "I missed you."

Ah, yes, that was what she'd been missing, she thought while tucking herself under his arm as they stepped back into the house, shutting the night out behind them.

"Palaven treat you alright?"

"Not too many complaints," he answered, leaving his bag behind in the foyer, a note made in his head to fetch it later. Shepard led the way back up the stairs and Garrus dutifully followed along back to the bedroom the three of them shared. It had felt tight that first night beside her, just the two of them, and with a baby added to the mix, it had become tight—to say the very least. But save for the possibility of usurping one of the living quarters down below, there was no more space to be had, the rest of the house's occupants living much the same. Cozy, Shepard always said. Cramped, Garrus usually replied right back.

"I expected him to be asleep this late," he said, easing himself down onto the edge of the bed as Shepard paced the short length of the room, gently rocking the baby into some kind of calm. "But then I remembered who we're dealing with. He never sleeps when we want him to." His mandibles flared, mouth smiling.

Shepard shifted Nathan back up to her shoulder, kissing just above his ear. "Your Papa's talking bad about you again," she said with much amusement. "Don't listen to him. You're just particular and know what you want."

"You look tired," Garrus said as he eyed her, the darkness beneath her eyes. "Sit down, give him here."

"Says the person who just spent the past thirty hours traveling," she countered, but her body behaved contrary to her words, trading Nathan to the turian and coming to sit beside them both. Shepard rested her head against his clothed shoulder, eyes trained on her son.

Nathan settled in with the behavior learned since his birth, fingers gripping at Garrus' cowl much in the same way he did to his mother's shoulder while Garrus curled an arm about him, holding him close. From the back of his throat, Garrus purred, and the calming pulse placated the boy from his earlier, excited fussiness.

"I made the arrangements," Garrus finally said, and it was only then that Shepard's eyes lazily blinked back open.

"Yeah? What'd you tell him?"

"Just said I wanted to catch up," he went on, recalling the exchange of messages he'd had with Kaidan in the days he'd been gone.

Shepard swallowed hard over the hesitation and dryness in her throat and reached a shaky hand out towards her son, palming the back of his skull as her thumb smoothed over the wisps of hair, dark in color just like his father's. Every day she saw a new mannerism in him, a new expression on his face that belonged not to her, but to the man Nathan had never met. Biology was a funny thing. "What's he been doing these days?"

"Liaising, mostly, or so I've heard. The Alliance and Council have been pulling him in all directions, but we both know—"

"—That he's always been more of an Alliance man," she said with a satisfied, if small, smile.

"He offered to meet me closer to Palaven, but I managed to make an excuse, said I'd be coming back to Earth for Victus, and Kaidan said he had some time off coming up to see his family back in Vancouver."

"So," she nodded, sitting up. "Vancouver it is, then."

"I could've—"

"No, I'm glad it's not here. If… it doesn't work out, it'll be good he doesn't know where I've been."

"It's going to be _fine_ ," he said with tenacity, leaning into her to kiss and nuzzle the top of her head. "But if you need more time…"

"It's been too long already," she sighed. "I've already waited too long. The only thing that made me really change my mind as of late was because Nathan _recognizes_ people now, you know? He knows me, he knows you, he knows everyone here. And I want him to at least have the chance to get to know Kaidan like the rest of us before he just sees him as a stranger and the first impression of his father is terror."

Garrus shifted Nathan down, cradling him along his forearm as the boy gradually relaxed and went limp and sleep called to him. Even from his slumber he fidgeted, face crinkling as he turned in the direction of the warmth radiating from Garrus' body. He wasn't sure when it had happened, if it had been that first day of Nathan's life or it had been in the weeks that followed, or maybe if he was honest it was when he saw Shepard for that first time months ago, stomach swollen with the child she carried, a sign that not only was she alive but that she was bringing new life with her as well. What didn't matter was when it happened, but _that_ it happened, that somewhere along the way that little boy had become far more than just any other child out there in the universe. He wasn't his, but somewhere deep inside, Garrus knew this would be as close as he would ever get, and for that he was happy. He gave a satisfied sigh while he lovingly swept his forehead across the boy's.

Shepard ran her fingers along his spine as he pulled away to let the boy rest in peace. "Did I ever say thank you for everything you've done?"

"Once or twice."

"I don't just mean…" her voice was frail, quiet. "For being here. I mean for being there for me through everything. Everything with Cerberus, everything after Menae—you've always been there, no matter what. Even when you probably shouldn't have been… there you were."

"Well," he paused, "that's what friends are for."

"And I was an idiot," Shepard cut in, but was careful to keep her voice down. "Couldn't see you, couldn't see _us_ because I was blinded by Kaidan all over again. Turning you down—" her head shook, "—I still regret it."

"I'll agree with the idiot remark," he joked, plates of his face shifting accordingly, "but it happened, it's over."

Nathan breathed out a heavy exhale, shifted again in his sleep, punctuating their words with a reminder of his presence.

"Yeah, and the end now… it isn't so bad."

Garrus had to agree.

"Thank you for this too," she added in, standing beside the bed. He got the hint and rose as well, crossing the short distance to the small cradle where Garrus bent over and laid Nathan inside. Shoulder to shoulder, Shepard stood next to him even as he placed his palm to the boy's stomach and chest, an added comfort until he was resting easy and calm once more.

"You know that whatever happens with Kaidan—it doesn't change who you are to him, right?"

He wore his reluctant uneasiness on his face, not saying a word.

"And what you are to me—the three of us, we're something now. Family or…" her face wrinkled in a nervous distaste for the word, "I don't know what you're comfortable calling it. But we're something together and I'm not ever letting go of that, not so long as you don't want me to, do you understand?"

Garrus let his hand pull away from Nathan, and instead linked his fingers with Shepard's as a show of solidarity.

"It's just one more thing, right?" Through their tied hands she pulled him back towards the bed they shared, stopping when the backs of her knees came into contact with the bed frame. "We've made it through worse."

"Thresher maws, reprogrammed heretic geth, giant reaper-squid at the bottom of the ocean on far away planets—I'm still not forgiving you for that one, by the way."

"You're just trying to get me hot, aren't you?"

"Is it working?"

Shepard smiled, placed a hand to his high ridged cowl. "Yeah. Now come whisper to me about heat sinks and that time you took out a brute from half a mile away."

"Kate," he whispered, his hand already pushing at the hem of her shirt, his face buried into her neck. "You'll never be quiet enough."

"We can always try."


	9. Chapter 9

If it hadn't been for the encryption and triple-verified authentication code on the messages from Garrus, Kaidan would never have believed the correspondence to be real. He was a friend, would always be, but it still didn't explain how out of the blue the contact had been. Turians, even the likes of Garrus, weren't exactly known for their sentimentality, and so the reason of _catching up_ hadn't exactly sat well in the pit of his stomach. Maybe if it were Tali or Liara, Kaidan would have bought the excuse, but for Garrus… there wasn't something quite right. It wasn't that their friendship included animosity, just that there had been something off between them in the past year, and Kaidan always suspected that it had much to do with his treatment of Shepard back on Horizon.

He'd done his best at avoiding the faces of the friends he'd made on the SR-2 and SR-1 since they'd all finally parted ways all those months ago, and this behavior was strategic, not just a circumstance of work and time complications as he may have wanted to lead others to believe. Sure, with the clean-up of the galaxy and tensions still running high nearly a year out he truly _was_ busy beyond words, but even Kaidan knew no one would fault nor discourage him taking a breather every now and then, everything else considered. The truth was that he didn't want to face them, didn't want to see people that knew him the best because there was wear and tear around his edges, the same kind that had been there after Shepard—the first—had died, and Kaidan just wasn't sure he could plaster on the smile, nod and dismiss their worries. He was fine, he'd say. Carving out a new place for himself. Getting by, when the reality was that every night, every single damn night, he shut his eyes and barely slept because behind his closed eyelids all he saw was both of those women he'd known by the name of Shepard, and all the horrible ways in which they likely died.

He'd hesitated at accepting the proposal from Garrus, had even typed out a message to turn him down, but then he'd taken a glance at the galaxy clock on his omni-tool and been reminded of just how much time had passed since the end of the war. It really was nearly a year—his body clenched at the realization that it had been a _year_ since he'd seen her alive—and part of him could recall that broken expression Garrus had worn when they both moved independently and silently in Shepard's quarters upon the news that she was, with almost absolute certainty, _dead_. They both took pieces of her that night, Kaidan looking for the things that were both of the women he'd cared for, and in the back of his throat he could still feel that near painful lump when Garrus had handed him those framed dog tags, the ones that had belonged to the first, and then gone back to shuffling through Shepard's belongings, desperately looking for his own pieces of her to cling to. Maybe, Kaidan thought, after a year from when they'd lost her, Garrus was reaching to him because _he_ needed the companionship, the ability to talk to someone about the woman they knew, because unlike the rest of their friends, the two of them were the only ones who knew the truth when it came to who the woman behind the mask really was.

So he'd deleted that first message and written a new reply. They would meet, and whatever ugly emotions came of it… he'd deal with that later.

_Stanley Park_ , it had once been called. If you looked on a map, even one of the new ones that had been generated in the aftermath that showcased the new city limits as well as ongoing repairs, Kaidan was sure the swath of green was still indicated by the formal name. To those that were repopulating downtown Vancouver, however, it had taken on the new name of _Memorial_ _Park_. Though there were other priorities when it came to reclaiming and settling Earth and the rest of the galaxy—things like food and shelter and healthcare—citizens and enlisted alike had taken to restoring the urban oasis that bordered the former metropolis and the sea to something of its former glory.

The trees, decades and centuries old, were mostly gone—there was nothing that could be done about that amount of destruction—but foliage had returned to the once trampled and charred landscape, bathing the dirt in greens and sprinklings of other colors as the flowers died out and gave way to autumn. He knew if you walked along the perimeter and down to the shore, the beach had been made equally as beautiful through the hard work of volunteers as they combed the sand and water for shrapnel and detritus, offering families a small relief in these still tragic times. As for the parts nearest where the city center had been, there were even benches among the cracked walkways, children and adults milling about, and at the center of the hustle and bustle was the reason why the park's name had colloquially changed at all.

He hadn't seen it, only heard the rumors of its existence, and witnessing the small structure with his own two eyes felt surreal. A short stone wall, marble, maybe granite, curved and sloped downward from the peak of only a few feet at the middle, and across its face were words he didn't have the heart to read. Loss, he knew it would speak of. Loss, life, perseverance, remembrance, courage. All the words that would inspire those who could freshly recall the experience, and would serve to remind those in the future who were spared witnessing the massacre firsthand. But that wasn't the interesting part, wasn't what had everyone's interest captivated. No, that belonged to the holo playing along the top ridge of the wall, a repeating loop of images. Gone were the gore and horror of the war from the cycling clips, instead replaced by moving pictures of soldiers pulling others from the rubble, a shot of the might of all the galaxy's ships moving together in defense of Earth. He felt a punch to the gut when Anderson appeared, looking younger than Kaidan ever recalled.

Then there was another hit, this one worse than the first, when he saw the vision of Shepard, alive and like she was still breathing as someone filmed while she spoke to a group of soldiers, seasoned warriors and new recruits together. He couldn't date it, couldn't figure which woman it belonged to, and for once, it didn't matter. He touched his finger tips to the cool stone ahead of him, brushing over the engraving _May we never forget._

Beside him, a woman spoke, their shoulders nudging the other's. He almost didn't hear her at first, lost in his own grief, but there was something about it that cut through the ringing in his ears and the other voices around them.

"She was impressive, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," Kaidan grunted.

"Too bad I don't look much like that anymore."

The sheer construction of the sentence confused and baffled him, so much so that he forced his tightly clenched eyes to open, head canting to the side to get a look at the woman. He didn't recognize her, though the scars she wore on her left side were significant and distinctive as they traveled from her cheek down her throat, disappearing beneath the collar of the long sleeved sweater she wore. The stranger looked dead ahead, watching the holo as it looped endlessly, playing again for all those who had yet to see the memorial monument for themselves.

There was some kind of disconnect, synapses firing in his brain but not interfacing properly, because deep in his bones he knew that voice, knew the comfort he felt just at this unknown person being near, and yet he couldn't _comprehend_ it. That was, until, the woman turned her head to look at him, the unmarred side of her face coming into view, bright eyes reflecting back at him, even the short chopped hair falling across her forehead. It was a ghost. He was seeing a ghost for the second time in his life.

"I'm not," she said, seeming to know where his thoughts traveled.

Which, if he had to say, was only more convincing for his argument. Maybe not a ghost then, but definitely losing his mind. His eyes watered, not because he had feared finally snapping after all this time, but because he'd been waiting for it, hoping for it, and finally… that blissful break from reality had come.

The woman blinked, stared across at him, but said nothing else, and though he'd imagined this a million different ways, never before had the mirage been silent. Something wasn't right.

She smiled, softly at least, sadness in the creases at the corners of her eyes, and finally spoke. "Hi, Kaidan." Shepard touched his cheek without apprehension.

The dream of her had never done that either, never touched him and felt real. She was warm, and he could even sense the slight tremor to her hand. His eyes widened in disbelief and he was as solid as concrete, unable to move, barely even breathing.

"I… it's me," she delivered without eloquence. For all the time she'd had to prepare, the words were still missing.

"Shepard?" He only just got out, lower jaw hanging slack, lips divorced from one another as he looked to her.

She visibly relaxed, even if it was only an inch when she needed a mile, and nodded. "Yeah. I'm here. And very much real."

It was like an avalanche after that, everything all at once. Kaidan launched himself at her, wrapping her within his arms, afraid she would evaporate if he didn't have a grasp on her. He wanted to close his eyes but he couldn't, could only press the sides of their heads together as he held her, tears streaking down his cheeks as he wept with eyes open and in silence, his fingers caught in the cropped lengths of her hair.

She was alive and warm and breathing—he could even feel her inhale and exhale and the sensation was marvelous—and her fingers were pinching at his sides and back as she gripped him with just as much fervent need as he did. She trembled with her own tears of sadness or joy, he wasn't sure but it didn't matter, and as the crowds moved by, they became a stationary beacon among all the other moving points. Oh god, he could smell her, her scent so rich despite the foreign complexities of a different soap, a different life, so strong he felt he was nearly being doused in it, every single memory of both of the women he'd known to be Shepard hitting him all at once. From the first time they'd met on the Normandy, to a wound he'd bandaged for her on a mission, a shared cup of coffee on shore leave, the taste of her kiss after she'd just trailed her mouth over every single inch of his body. She was real, she was here, and Kaidan… he could do nothing but hold her tight.

"Where did you go?" He whispered against her neck as he dropped his head down to her shoulder. "Where have you been?"

"Around—I…I've been busy," she gasped and pulled back, not far as he still clung to her. Shepard had to nearly force his hands from her though they resisted, finally lacing their fingers together as a substitute for what he couldn't have. "We should go somewhere quieter," she said, her eyes darting from left to right, a reminder of the crowd they were part of.

Kaidan fixated on her until she tugged at their connected limbs, and then he hurried, never wanting to be far behind. Their hands were folded into one another, but he needed more than that, their shoulders, arms, hips touching as they walked, slipping through the empty spaces among the bodies around them. They didn't cover much ground, stopping only when Shepard spotted a newly vacated chunk of blunt rubble, probably once a piece of a building that had been dragged there and now doubled as a seat of sorts. She pulled him down with her, knees turned in his direction, and immediately pressed her cold palms to either side of his face, thumbs smoothing at the dark spots under his eyes.

"Let me see you," Shepard requested, and like she was performing a cursory mid-battle check of an injured comrade, she tilted his head gently from side to side, looking for new scars instead of fresh bruising and blood, seeing in all the ways the last year had changed him. The grey hairs were still there, perhaps more numerous than she recalled, the creases around his eyes and across his forehead more severe. His eyes, just as amber in color as she could recall, watched her loyally, following her every move, and Shepard couldn't help but think of the baby she'd born with the same shape to his own eyes and brow. She nearly broke at that, but kept herself together, at least long enough to draw herself back to him, kissing the patch of salt and pepper hair, lips lingering against his scalp.

She'd known he was safe, known he had survived, but until now, Shepard hadn't felt it. As sure as she could feel the scrape of stubble from his beard against her palm, Kaidan really was alive.

Her hands fell away, and in the next instant Kaidan was repeating her actions, maneuvering her head, first the good side and then the one that was decidedly more damaged. Shepard shut her eyes, could almost confuse the way he touched and looked at her for the same way Garrus had done when surveying the scars, allowing Kaidan the time to come to terms with what the war had done to her. He traced the line down to her jaw where perfect skin met uneven, healed scar tissue.

"What happened?"

Shepard's eyes opened, meeting his, and for all the seriousness the situation called for, she raised a single shoulder and shrugged. "The Citadel."

Kaidan didn't return her humor, reminded of the fact that Shepard had, in fact, made it up to the Citadel at all. They'd lost contact with her, or that was the story the public had been fed and what Garrus had reiterated to her from what he knew. They'd lost contact and after that the war had ended, presumably due to what she'd done. Just what had occurred up there wasn't for anyone to know but herself, and Kaidan's expression was wrought with the pain of knowing now for certain that she had walked into hell itself for the sake of all of them.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" He asked, dragging a hand down her left arm like he could simply feel the damage beneath her clothes and skin.

"I'm okay," she reassured him, palming the back of his hand with the one from her opposite arm. His movements stilled. "Hurts some days—" Shepard shook her head, "no, every day. But I can manage it."

"Have you seen—I need to take you to a doctor, get you checked out—" Kaidan's words rushed from his mouth.

"I'm _alright_ ," she said again. "I had care. Not the best, but enough. I'm okay, Kaidan. Listen to me, I'm okay."

He blinked away the hysterical panic that had edged its way in, taking a deep, calming breath as he stared across at the image that was most definitely not a ghost after all. His brows furrowed as he tried to process the information, the very knowledge that she'd somehow made it through alive. His head shot up sharply.

"Did the Alliance—did they have you somewhere this whole time?"

"No," she said with insistence, shaking her head.

"The Council? Batarians?" And then, the more disgusting thought hit him. " _Cerberus_? The Illusive Man? No one's heard from him since everything happened, did he—?"

"Kaidan…" she looked away, forcefully finding his hands again and twining their fingers back together. "He's dead."

"Dead?"

A cringe of pain flitted over her features. "Yeah. I—I made him… he killed himself." Garrus had asked on more than one occasion about the events that had transpired in the Citadel. Shepard had been decisively mum about the details, however, and though she'd let slip this one piece of information to Kaidan's ears, that was where it would end. That was behind her, she told herself, even if the nightmares still persisted, and she wouldn't give the past any more power over her than it already had.

Kaidan sensed the delicate nature of her words, keeping quiet. The silence wasn't out of mourning over the man that had caused half their problems, but out of respect for Shepard, for the things she must've seen and done that wouldn't be easy on anyone. Not even her.

"I don't understand," he said, returning to his earlier question. "Who—"

"It was _my_ choice," Shepard answered with haste.

He faltered, drawing away as though he'd been hit by her, that line between his brows more pronounced than usual as he tried to give understanding to her words. "You chose to let us think you were dead?"

Shame ran through her, felt in the warmth of her body, seen in the pink skin as blood rushed to the surface. Shepard let go of his hands and pulled hers back to her own thighs, head hung as she looked down to her palms and relearned the grooves worn into her skin. "I—" She opened her mouth to speak, but Kaidan was louder, cutting her off.

"Was it because of what I said?" He wasn't angry, wasn't accusing. If anything was there in between the lines, it was turned back in on himself. "Because of the things I said before… the way I treated you?"

The quickness with which he spoke clued Shepard in on just how long he'd been thinking such things. She'd thought long ago that to hear his worry over his prior actions would have been healing to her, a balm to her soul where he'd carved her apart. But being on the receiving end in the present wasn't like she envisioned. She just felt guilt.

He didn't deal well with her reticence despite how good he'd always been with it in the past, and when Shepard didn't respond right away, Kaidan turned his body outward, facing the courtyard of the park rather than her directly. Blankly, his eyes followed the life that thrummed through the park, listening to the laughter and chatter, the happiness people shared at being alive. Shepard, he knew, was the reason for that.

Kaidan dropped his elbows down to just above his knees and slunk forward. "I was sure," he began, that husky voice deep and quiet, "that the reason you didn't survive was because of how I was to you that last day."

There was truth to it, but Shepard wasn't about to interrupt. Even if it had been a reason, even so recently as ten minutes before, she couldn't bear to say the words that would serve to further hurt him.

"I kept thinking," his eyes shut, hands rising in the same position as he pressed his fingers to his eyelids. Tears didn't show, but from the quake of his voice, it was apparent to anyone who knew him that he was only just reining himself in. "That I'd ruined what reason you had to come back alive. I'm not… so full of myself to think that I was the most important thing in your life, I know you've had friends that have been with you through more than I have, that have always had your back without question, but I couldn't stop thinking it. The things I said to you, even when we were saying goodbye in London… They have a recording, you know, from when you were talking to Hackett up in the Citadel. I've listened to it a thousand times, if not more. The way you sounded, I could hear your life slipping away. My god, Shepard, until five minutes ago I thought I'd killed you myself, done so much as put the bullet in your chest that ended your life because of the shit I said."

Desperately, she wanted to turn away from him, but found that she couldn't no matter how hard she tried. They'd both played their parts in their last day or two together, the two of them left to deal with the fallout from who she was and the details that had been concealed, and though he was guilty of some of the things he'd said, Shepard knew it had been a confusing time for both of them. To expect him, a man with such a complicated past when it came to the women of her name, to simply accept and cope within a twenty-four hour period of receiving such devastating information… she had to admit it was asking for too much, especially when something as complicated as grief came into the picture.

She hadn't seen what had happened to him after the first Shepard had died, had only heard of the toll it had taken on him secondhand as well as been witness to the treatment he'd dealt to her afterward. This, however, this right here in front of her, was only a glimpse of what she'd imagined he'd lived through now not once, but twice. For so long she'd thought that staying away was the merciful thing for both of them, and while it had provided her with a modicum of comfort when it came to avoiding the real world, it had not only left him broken, but her as well. She'd made such a horrible mistake.

"Why would you do it?"

Garrus had asked a similar question to her those months before. She still didn't have an answer that she believed could justify what she'd done.

"I know I don't even have a right to ask or question or—just _anything_ ," he sighed, exasperated. "But all I've done is think since you've been gone, Shepard."

"Why do you call me that?" She asked softly, but genuinely curious. "Before—you tried not to, like I didn't deserve it."

Kaidan winced and then slowly, eventually, sat up straight and looked back to her. "Because you're Shepard." His words were simple as though painfully evident, but before she could protest he was speaking again. "What you did and sacrificed for everyone—Earth—the galaxy—you deserve that name just as much as she did."

Shepard wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, looking away. Moisture was smeared across her cheek bones, the majority of it cleared away but still some remaining. In her chest, she suddenly felt as though a vice had gone slack, releasing the tension it compressed into her heart, a pain she'd carried for so long now that she'd nearly forgotten it was there at all, or that was, until she'd felt the overwhelming relief.

"It didn't feel right to go on living as someone else," she explained. "I go by Katherine now, after my—"

"Your grandmother," he replied for her, "I know."

Shepard's eyelids and lashes flickered through her thickness of tears, and for the first time in a long time, she looked at him with a bit of amazement in her eyes. "You remember that?"

"You told me about her back on our shore leave one night, after Saren. I remember."

There was no hesitation or shift of his words when he talked. No correction of she versus you versus her that had been versus the one that lived. It hadn't been her back then, not really, the memory was from the first Shepard, and yet he chose not to see it that way.

"You don't have to pretend," she started, "not for me—"

Kaidan's head shook. "You and her… I know you're not the same. I know that. And it would be wrong to you and to her to pretend like there's no difference. I don't know when I started to think it—a few months ago maybe. You're different, but you're not, and all of this, it doesn't make you any less real than she was." His hand dropped from her scalp down to her chest, palm slightly off-centered against the top of her ribcage. Shepard startled at the touch. "I know you're real."

It was a conclusion she'd come to on her own, one that had only been reinforced by the people she'd surrounded herself with, by Garrus' reappearance into her life, and by the son she gave birth to. But it didn't make it worth any less to hear it from him.

"I never said I loved her," he said as his hand released. "I felt it, but never got a chance to say it. I said it to you though, and for so long I thought it meant I betrayed her in some way I couldn't even begin to understand. I thought I _lied_ when I said it to you, but I didn't. She gave you a good start—but I cared about you because of _you_."

Time, they said, healed all wounds. They were both still gaping, bleeding out from the injuries they carried and nursed on their own, but maybe, just maybe, she could feel that light-headed dizziness from the bloodloss begin to fade more everyday.

Shepard leaned into him and across the tiny gap of space that separated their bodies, hooked an arm about his waist as she burrowed her head against his shoulder and neck. It was familiar, and for that fact alone, it was perfect. As Kaidan soothed a hand over the back of her head, their bodies only just barely rocking together, he offered a gentle hum of reassurance. It reminded her in so many ways of how Garrus treated her son when he needed that extra inch of comfort.

"Kaidan—"

"What have you been doing all this time?"

"I—" this hadn't been the plan. The plan included seeing Kaidan and getting him to meet his son and then running away from the damage. She'd hoped for the best, but not prepared for it, and his kind, genuine curiosity was something she didn't know how to deal with. Shepard, like always, went with her gut. She told the truth. "I've been helping civilians— _friends_ ," she amended. "Adapting some of the things I learned as a soldier for families instead. Helping them learn how to grow their own food so they didn't starve when their rations didn't come through or weren't enough." She coughed, words caught and voice painfully tight. "You know, I know about farming."

Kaidan kissed her brow and whispered, "I know."

"But… this isn't why I came here."

He stiffened slightly, but tried not to let it show.

Shepard counted to ten. One, two, three… taking careful, measured breaths. When she reached ten she would say what she'd come here for. She wouldn't delay, wouldn't give in to cowardice where she'd so rarely done before in other areas of her life. Nine. Ten. She lifted her head from his shoulder.

"There's something I came here for."

"Is there something you need? Help? Credits? They're not worth a whole lot anymore but things are slowly starting to return to normal…"

Her head shook, trying to derail his train of thought. Shepard pressed her fingers perpendicular to the wide cut of his lips, effectively silencing him.

"I don't know how to say it. I have to show you." Her hand abandoned his lips to instead brush through his thick hair, soft and downy like the mop of it that was atop her son's head. It had thinned some since his birth, but what had been lost had grown back, just as dark and prominent as the man he shared half his DNA with.

Kaidan gave her a skeptical eye, and she could nearly see the refusal there, but it never came. "Then show me."

Her lips flattened out into a tight line together, a terse nod given to him to at least acknowledge his words. She stood, but before he could join her on his feet, she turned back around, hands to his shoulders, holding him where he sat. "I need you to…"

"To what?"

"Whatever happens, I need you to understand something. I need you to understand that I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but I was afraid, and I'm here… I'm here because I want to make it right."

Kaidan hadn't the faintest clue what she was talking of, but all at once an anxiousness pumped through his veins. The way she was speaking with solemn seriousness left him fearful, but also hopeful, and the most outlandish thoughts ran through his head. Had she somehow figured out a way to bring Shepard— _his_ Shepard—back to them? The thought was ugly and disgusting in so many ways, especially since he knew Cerberus had failed at it years earlier and what little had been left of the first Shepard had been blown to bits back in the Chronos Station. Still, some quiet part of him throbbed with the possibility of that excitement, however outrageous it was, that maybe on the other side of the park a woman looking just like the one before him would be standing, waiting for him. If anyone, he tried to convince himself, could somehow make it possible, it would be this very woman in front of him.

But at the same time, Kaidan knew it couldn't be true, and instead his head returned full of fear of what Shepard was leading him directly towards. He was a soldier and Spectre, a good one, and if he'd been half in his right mind, he would have called for back-up, let someone know what was happening especially when the savior of the galaxy returned from the dead a second time, but he couldn't. He just didn't care. Kaidan nodded up to her, and when the pressure of her hands eased from his body, he stood and started to follow.

Her gait was different from how it had been only fifteen, twenty minutes before when she'd brought them to that seat, her face coming into view as she nervously peeked back at him from over her shoulder, like she was certain he would change his mind. They left the main spread of the park, back to where the sounds of the city, even as torn apart as it still was and would remain for years, buzzed by. Stores, mostly selling the essentials, filled what shops had been repaired, reconstructed, or just shockingly spared in the attacks, and construction was in full bloom. A row of skycars lined the street that edged along the boundary of the park and Shepard's footsteps slowed the nearer they came towards one of nondescript origin.

Kaidan reached for her hand, tugged her to a halt when they were a few feet off her intended destination. "If it's something you don't want me to know… you don't have to," he assured. There was no obligation between them however certain of it she felt, and he wanted her to know of the fact, although mostly he was terrified of what revelation she could make, what truth that could make her as nervous as she was.

She blinked rapidly for a moment, almost considering the way out he'd given her, but Shepard dismissed the idea with a shallow shake of the head after another second's thought. Her lips, the same lips he'd kissed so roughly and so much in the past that he could still recall being swollen and red from his attention, pulled into a forced half smile, off-centered at one corner of her mouth. "No, I need to show you what I've been doing while I was gone. Stay… stay right here."

Shepard didn't go much further, just towards the front of the car and away from where Kaidan lingered by the tail. Her fist rapped on the tinted glass and in response the top rose up towards the sky, the hiss of hydraulics sounding as it did so. From where he stood he couldn't see much into the vehicle beyond part of the empty driver's seat as Shepard put one foot in towards the back of the car to brace herself as she leaned in. She was talking to someone, he could hear enough to know it was dual flanged and that meant turian—he'd forgotten about Garrus he immediately realized, and then in the next thought he _understood_. Garrus was the stranger in the car, and this had been why he had wanted to meet him. It had been for Shepard.

In his moment of panic and then comprehension, he had missed the transition of Shepard's normal speaking voice into something much more delicate, the words mostly muffled by the auxiliary noises and the car itself that was between them. He'd heard her speak in a number of ways, from commanding officer to lover and everything in the middle, but still there was something _different_ about the tone her words carried. It was soft, gentle, calming. She sounded, he realized, at peace.

Then that beautiful, ethereal voice was broken up by something else: a sharper sound that existed for a second, a whimper that followed, a high-pitched and ungraceful whine. Shepard reacted in time with it, humming and cooing, and the disturbance quieted down, allayed in an instant. Kaidan craned his neck, and just when he could _almost_ catch a glimpse of what it was that she was doing, Shepard stood back up, planting both her feet on the sidewalk, the car door closing behind her. In her arms, she gently bounced a child. No. A baby. She had a _baby_.

His throat just about closed up at the sight, blanket half falling from her arms as it was loosely wrapped over the child's back and bottom, bare feet sticking out and barely visible. Tiny feet and toes, he marveled, smaller than he ever imagined. It wasn't that he'd never held a child or seen one, just that it had been _so_ very long since he had. Children of a few years old and on up had been orphaned by the tens of thousands by the end of the war, and even Kaidan had interacted with a number of them. But babies… not babies. It was only recently that he'd even heard the interesting fact that maternity wards were starting to become full again as people returned to their normal lives of having children and starting families where they'd been unable to before on a Reaper occupied Earth. Shepard, she was one of those women now, she was a mother.

More fascinating than the feet was the way Shepard was in tune with the child, temporarily ignoring his presence altogether to favor the baby. She kissed its brow, cheeks, nose, and it earned her an appreciate and approving sound. There were sweet little nothings she cooed, a caress she gave to the baby's back, and the way the baby pawed helplessly at her skin, her clothes, even trying to reach some of her hair without much luck. Happy, though. That was the only word he could use to describe mother and child. Happy. And he was too, happy for her, happy that she'd found something that suited her even more than being a soldier ever did, yet still he felt his eyes moisten with tears, trying to hold them back.

"You really were busy," he said, and it sounded far smarter in his head than it did aloud.

Shepard looked up, like she'd almost forgotten about him from where she stood, and that easiness between her and the baby faded a little with a reminder that she wasn't alone. Still, she smiled, this time without a struggle or having to try to hard as she gently rested her cheek against her child's head. "Yeah."

"I'm happy for you," he said a little too quickly and all at once. "That you've found someone, that you're a mother."

His words seemed to wound her slightly, and Shepard just shook her head as the weight shifted between her feet, hips rocking side to side in an effort that calmed both her and the baby that fussed in her arms. "I have someone," she acknowledged with her eyes flicking towards the skycar then back to him.

Kaidan repeated the movement her eyes had done, though it took him a minute to understand. "…Garrus? You and…?"

A tilt of her head was all the acknowledgement she gave before moving on. "But he's not… he's obviously not the father."

_Oh_. He felt sick. He wasn't sure if he was following her correctly, but the assumption that the father wasn't in the child's life for a specific and unsavory reason, the possibility that such a baby resulted from someone—no, he stopped, placed a steadying hand to the car. Not to her.

Shepard approached him fast enough, reaching out to touch his forearm. "No," she said resolutely. "It's not what you're thinking. Nothing like that."

They made eye contact and that nausea in his gut quelled, though he remained as unsteady as he'd been a moment before.

"Do you need to sit down?"

"No… I'm fine," he lied, leaning up against the car for a little more support while he watched her. The baby in her arms rested its head to her shoulder, tiny little eyes glancing back at him when Shepard's body twisted enough.

"I really think you should," she insisted, but Kaidan just waved her off. Shepard turned slightly and the child's view of him was no longer clear, forcing the baby to lift its head more proactively to eye the stranger. She noticed, and accommodated the child's curious nature, providing a better angle for which the baby to study him.

"Boy?" He asked. "Girl?"

"A son."

Kaidan took in the details of the baby's face, chubby cheeks, a roundness to his soft skin. Eye color like Shepard's, he decided, but not quite the same shape. And that hair, oh that hair, there wasn't an ounce of Shepard in that kid's hair.

Shepard cleared her throat and when Kaidan raised his eyes from the baby to her, she spoke. " _Your_ son."

" _What_?" He replied without even thinking, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

She withdrew on herself, letting go of his arm to wrap it back around her son, nestling him in close to her as she kissed his scalp, breathed in the clean scent of him. Shepard had been sure of herself half a breath ago and now she wavered where she stood, like his one simple word had been enough to shake her to her core, derail her from where she'd been. "I..," she stammered, "he's yours, Kaidan."

He wished he'd taken that seat she'd offered him. His legs felt boneless, his skin hot all over as he tried, even on the most basic and fundamental level, to make sense of what she was saying. "How—I mean—" Kaidan stopped, the rest of the world gone dark around them. "How old is he?"

"Almost five months."

It didn't take a genius to do the math in his head, to understand that it wasn't some virgin-birth miracle or trick of Cerberus or anything else. The one year anniversary of her supposed death was nigh, and no matter how early or late that child had come still meant his origin, his conception, was in the middle of the very worst of that horrible war's end.

"I didn't come here to force you…" Shepard was rambling, already retreating at the first sign of defeat when it came to the matters of the heart. "I came here because I wanted you to know that you were—that you're a father, that you have a son."

"Please—just stop," he pleaded with her, a hand waving between them mindlessly. "I need to… think."

She did as asked, silencing herself, even giving him the benefit of looking away, eyes distant and unfocused on the people that filtered in and out of the park. A pair of children chased each other on the grass. An older woman—their grandmother, she presumed—watched on. A toddler clung to her father, perched in his arms, giggling. Nathan, in hers, made a neutral gurgle at her, and Shepard came back to the present, looking to her son as she heard the uneasy sounds coming from Kaidan. Shepard ventured a glance back towards him, and his face was hidden mostly by his large hands, a deep shudder shaking through him.

"Did you know… before?" He asked her.

"No—not a clue, not until after."

"And this was why you stayed away?" Wiping the tears from his face, his eyes were red, blood vessels discoloring the white of his eyes. "Because you were pregnant?"

"It wasn't just that, it was knowing who I was and wasn't, not being able to look ahead to the rest of my life pretending to be someone I know I'm not. And when it came to you, I didn't know how I could tell you I was pregnant, especially with how we left things. I thought it would be the best thing for everyone if I just disappeared." Even to her, the words sounded hollow now. That scared woman, alone in that field hospital tent, wounded and broken in so many ways—Shepard hardly recognized her anymore. She wasn't the same person and she liked to think if it had happened now, she would have chosen differently.

"Is he healthy?" Kaidan managed. "Is he okay? With everything we went through and you must've—is he alright?"

She nodded just as quickly as she could. "Kaidan," a beat, and then deep, motherly joy, "he's perfect."

The floodgates opened for them at her last word, both of them seeking the other out and meeting in the middle. His arms wrapped about her and her son— _their_ son—and Shepard returned it with one arm. The baby, with the two adults around him blubbering, fussed at the intrusion, and then sensing on some level that something was inherently wrong, his own face contorted and wibbled, lips upturned dramatically, quivering as a cursory cry was let out. His mother tried to comfort him through her tears, but the baby was having none of it, only growing louder.

"Shh," she hushed, wiping away his tears but not bothering with her own. "It's alright, you're alright," she reminded him once again with that gentle tone of voice she'd used earlier. "Do you know who this is?" Shepard's head nudged in the general direction of Kaidan, even in their close proximity. And then, with much pride, she looked back to the child's father. "This is your dad."

A child that young, there was no understanding or recognition on his face, just vague curiosity through his sadness even as it waned. Kaidan brushed away his own tears, not wanting to look at his son through blurry eyes, and those features that before he'd seen as simply _not Shepard's_ , had changed. They weren't just not hers. Now… now they were _his._

"Hi," he said, then glanced to Shepard for approval. "Can I hold him? Will he be okay with that?"

She nodded, beginning the process of transitioning the baby out of her arms and to Kaidan's, the blanket nearly falling to the dirty concrete but Kaidan caught it within his grasp, saving it from being soiled. The child fussed at first, animated and loud as he came to settle for the very first time in his father's arms, but Shepard's influence worked wonders. Her hand comfortingly stroked his back and she moved just enough so she was in constant view of the boy at all times, offering him the safety and reassurance she brought. For Kaidan, it was new and strange, and the moisture that had pricked at his eyes before now returned, spilling as he held his son.

"Perfect," he whispered, repeating the word from before as he looked his son all over, from the tiny fists that alternated between extended fully and balled up, to even the layers of clothing he wore, soft and comfortable. "He's really mine?" He asked Shepard, but it wasn't with the accusation that anyone else could have fathered the baby in his arms. Rather, it was a question of disbelief. "He is," he answered to himself, kissing along the child's forehead and hairline. "He really is." A thought overcame him. "What's his name?"

"Nathan," Shepard replied.

"Good name," he said approvingly, then echoed it on back while looking at and talking to his son. "Nathan. It fits you. You look like a Nathan. God—he even _smells_ perfect."

She laughed. "It's a rarity, I've learned," but she didn't go on, not wanting to spoil the moment with tails of spit-up and diapers and the other, less-friendly things that came with parenthood.

"Tell me about him," he requested, running his fingers down Nathan's arm to one of his hands. "I know he's young, but what's he like?"

"He learned to laugh a few weeks ago, hasn't stopped since." It was strange to think that people were born into the world without all the usual things. Forget talking or anything as complicated as that. But smiling, laughing? Only as of late had Nathan become better able to express the contentment that swelled inside his chest, rather than just his displeasure. "Happy, I'd say. Not a great sleeper, but we manage."

A sudden, horrified thought occurred to him as he caressed down the back of Nathan's skull. "He's not—did you have him checked for eezo exposure? Tumors, biotics?"

"Against all odds," and it wasn't just all the things she'd lived through in the weeks she'd been pregnant but not yet known, but also the fact that she and her son had survived _at all_ , "he's normal. Boring, safe, and normal." She didn't say _for now_ , didn't dare think of the possibility in which her baby's future could change from one day to the next. He was fine, and forever, she believed, he would be.

Kaidan shut his eyes at the relief her words gave him, already feeling at home with his child in his arms. Where Shepard found heaven months before beneath the night sky with Garrus above her and then once again when her son was born; where Garrus had found heaven when he came home to Shepard and her newborn and cradled the two of them in his arms; Kaidan found his version of heaven too, with Shepard—the second one, though that acknowledgement didn't bring the same kind of pain it used to—and his son clutched to his chest. Yeah. It was heaven.

Shepard sniffled, continued to soothe her son by rubbing his back, and then, with a small voice, posed the question that had been hanging off the tip of her tongue. "Why aren't you mad? All the ways I imagined this would happen—it wasn't as good as this."

Forget the guilt he had, the pain that was still vibrant and strong in his chest, forget all of that. Kaidan shifted Nathan, keeping him close but at enough of a distance to look to his face, to study the features and behavior of his son while he spoke. "I woke up this morning like I have for the last year. I woke up and both you and Shepard were dead. I was alone, drowning in work and barely keeping my head above water. I haven't talked to any of our friends in almost half that time, have barely even been down to see my parents when I was nearby. But when I go to sleep tonight… I know Shepard's still gone, she's always going to be—but you're alive. And together… together we have a son. I'm a father. I'm a dad." He allowed his eyes to jump back to her. "From today on out, I'm not alone anymore."

Some of the empty spaces in her life had been filled by the people she'd met, the reappearance of Garrus, her son's face. But there had been some lingering spots that remained unfilled, barren and waiting. Kaidan gave her the hope that maybe she wouldn't have to learn to merely cope with those vacant chasms any longer.

"My parents—can they meet him?"

"Yeah, of course—of course. He should meet his grandparents."

He read her mind. "Yours would be proud of him, of you."

"I think so," she agreed. "I like to believe that even if I'm not really… I don't think they'd turn me away."

Kaidan smiled at her, genuine and warm, and that was all the refuge Shepard needed.

"Tell me about when he was born. Every day between then and now."

There, as the sun shined down upon them in a park in Vancouver, a park where children played on a memorial built for those that had been lost, Kate told Kaidan everything he wanted to hear. And finally, she let the other woman go.


	10. Epilogue

The view was different, but still much the same. Instead of an overcrowded farm, it was an orchard on another continent with a house equally as old, the floorboards worn away from a few centuries' worth of pacing. It was quieter, too, in that there were less voices, though not if the overall volume was measured instead. Loud: that was how Kate was raising her son, and no one else seemed to disagree. Happy and loud was something they'd all earned.

But for the time being it was quiet, blissfully so, and the only noise at all aside from the birds chirping and the wind blowing outside the home were the quiet, slow sounds of measured breathing as the occupants of the home slept. In the big wooden bed probably nearly as old as the house itself, Kate slept on her side, buried beneath blankets. At her back was Garrus, spooning in close, his forehead resting at the nape of her neck, while her front was claimed by the only person left in the galaxy that carried some of her own bloodline. Nathan curled up into the fetal position, facing in towards his mother, his knees tucked to her abdomen, his face buried against her chest.

The autumn air wasn't the only thing to blame for how close the three of them gathered together across the mattress—although the warmth they provided each other certainly didn't hurt—but rather it was still an earlier learned behavior, stemming from that time they'd shared together across the world in a much smaller room and its far tinier bed. And though having the two and a half year old in their bed wasn't an every night occurrence, there was no denial from Kate that she felt safer with her boy drawn in close, not to mention it usually meant he fell asleep with greater ease and stayed that way for far longer than he tended to otherwise.

What felt like a lifetime ago, the subtlest of creaks in the house would have set her off, alert and awake and ready for harm. That part of her had been reprogrammed, replaced by a natural intuition for her own child's cries, and as the house hummed with the soft thumps and clacks of the front door unlocking and opening, all of it followed by the soft footfalls of someone passing through the floor below them, Kate only awoke at the outer periphery of her consciousness. It was a common sound, at least over the last few years, and her mind made the necessary adjustments without pulling Kate into full and alert wakefulness. Instead, she simply nudged her elbow lazily back into Garrus behind her.

"Get up," she said, voice muffled through sleep and the pillow she spoke half into.

Garrus groaned, shifting, but only slipped his arm around her, pulling her a fraction of an inch closer.

"Kaidan's home. Go make him coffee."

" _You_ make him coffee," he grumbled, but each word was another step towards waking.

"Sleepy," she barely got out, and just as he'd done a moment before, she tightened her arm around her son, cradling the boy to her like he was still an infant. Nathan breathed out a content yawn from where he slept, nuzzling his cheek to the cloth of his mother's top. "Be a good turian," she teased, even still only partially-awake.

It was a battle he couldn't win, even if he was determined to be the victor one of these days. Forcing Kate to get up would mean Nate would also, with all likeliness, wake up, and in one of his grumpy moods, no doubt. In a perfect world, Nathan would simply roll over and take up Kate's spot against Garrus, but such large disturbances could only be glossed over when exhaustion was still a likelihood for the boy. It was morning though, and after a relatively decent bedtime, Nathan would probably just get up and whine for the next hour, frowning and refusing to eat breakfast for being woken up before he was ready.

Garrus climbed out of bed from the opposite side, tucking the blanket back around Kate to keep her back as warm as possible with the other body gone, and heading to the closet, pulled a tunic on over his bare chest. He didn't bother to fasten the sides as he walked, letting it hang open and loose and over the tighter fitted waistband of the pants he'd worn to bed.

"Good man," Kate said, a single eye open as she watched him go.

"Yeah, yeah," and though his voice was quite the opposite, the smile at the edge of his widely cut mouth lifted with the hint of a smile as he headed downstairs.

As it turned out, Kaidan was already manning the coffee pot, pouring the ground beans into the filter and pushing the uppermost portion closed as the water began the process of superheating itself in preparation for brewing. It was a skill Garrus had learned of at C-Sec and honed through his time with the mostly human crew of the Normandy even if turians had no such exact equivalent. Tea, however, seemed to be universal among the species, and with a nod of his head to Kaidan as he passed, Garrus put the kettle on the stove to begin to boil as well.

"Look tired," he said to Kaidan, using the countertop for support.

He sounded about as good as he looked, eyes heavy-lidded and dark. Kaidan scrubbed his palm over his face. "Not at all," he said with a bit of a joking grin, and after the break of silence, both men erupted into a shared moment of laughter.

"Got any good stories since your last leave?" Garrus asked. "We both know I've got to live vicariously through you now for my own thrills."

"Nothing too exciting," Kaidan remarked with almost a bit of sadness.

Though some small part of them both longed for the days of action and excitement—at least the days when things went _right_ and no one came home missing any significant pieces of themselves—there was a certain appreciation for the easiness life had provided as of late. It was a constant.

"Should just get some sleep while you can," the turian suggested, rocking his head from side to side to work out the kinks from the sleep he'd gotten, sleep that Kaidan most definitely had not found in the last twenty four hours.

"They still in bed?" Kaidan chanced a glance to the ceiling to where Kate and Nathan slept above them, and then dropped his eyes with a shake of his head, laughing to himself. "I think they'd stay there all day if we left them alone together."

"They _have_ ," Garrus said with evidence of both humor and pride. "I can't remember whose idea it was or why it got started, but somehow I ended up being the one who had to cook and bring all their meals to them. Stayed in their pajamas until the next morning," he dismissed with a shake of his head.

"Better you than me."

"If I recall—" Kate appeared through the doorway, pushing the ever falling down strap of her tank top back in place, and then running both her hands through her hair, the short ends sticking up and out all over. "We invited you to dinner with us," she said, eyeing Garrus. "And you enjoyed it very much. Even got crumbs in the bed."

Sheepish, Garrus couldn't be bothered to truly attempt hiding his smile.

"Morning," Kaidan offered as Kate stepped by, a bee-line made directly for the coffee maker. She gave an aggravated sound at pulling the glass pot out just enough to sense in the weight, as well as the look of it, that it was still empty. The top hissed, however, telling her it would be done soon.

"Sorry," she said, and moved back to him, this time stopping to kiss his cheek—a gesture he returned—and rub his upper arm up and down, as though restoring some kind of warmth to him. "You know I'm not a morning person."

Garrus made a self-satisfied hum of agreement from where he was, pulling the teapot off the stove as it whistled loudly. Kate took a dishtowel from the counter and tossed it in his general direction, a warning for the smugness he displayed, but turned her attention again to Kaidan.

"Little guy?" He inquired.

"Not quite ready to get up," she answered, pulling three mugs from one of the cabinets, passing one to Garrus and keeping the other two for herself while the coffee began its slow drip. "How long are you home for?"

"Who knows," he said exasperatedly. "Couple weeks, maybe. Until someone calls and…"

"Just in time, then."

He raised a rather questioning eyebrow. "For what?"

"Those apples aren't going to pick themselves."

"I thought you had people who do that for you? You've _always_ had people," he talked quick, backtracking and trying to excuse himself out of the responsibility. "Hell, even my parents had people."

"But it's more fun to have a biotic cursing because he thinks he can get the ones from the top without using a ladder."

"I can handle some _fruit_ ," he argued, taking the mug from her as she passed the steaming ration of morning caffeine.

"I've been working on a theory," Garrus spoke up, cup of herbal tea held to his mouth. "That Kaidan here always manages to plan his time off to make sure it doesn't coincide with any of the harvests, no matter the season. Crazy idea, huh?" He pointedly looked towards Kate, who was all too willing to play along.

"Suspicious," she agreed. "Even your parents are coming out to stay for a little while and help. What kind of role model are you? Shirking your duty so you can lay around and watch us do all the work. Poor Nathan's going to be out there with his wagon, picking up all the ones off the ground and dear old Dad's going to be on the couch with a beer."

"Oh shut up," he jokingly growled, and the room descended into mutual fits of light laughter. "When are they coming?"

"Few days, I think," and she looked back towards Garrus for confirmation. He only had an unsure shrug of his shoulders for her. "They came for the weekend two weeks ago—"

" _Mommy?_ " A little voice called from the hallway, the vowels dragging for far longer than they should've. Again came the holler, growing more impatient and frenzied at no immediate response. "Down," Nathan said, repeating endlessly.

"Down?" Kaidan mouthed, but didn't say aloud, a glance given towards both Kate and Garrus.

"Slipped on the last stair last week and fell on his butt," Kate explained while she headed for the doorway.

"Which has apparently traumatized him from ever going down them again," Garrus finished for her. "Up, no problem. Down?" He shook his head.

Out in the hallway, Kaidan could hear Kate speaking to their son from the foot of the staircase. He didn't see her, but could imagine the hands on her hips, feet spaced slightly apart for good footing as she used her most compelling voice to convince Nathan to quite literally, pick himself up after the fall and try again.

"We're going to be having pancakes down here," she said, trying to lure Nathan through his stomach. "And you're going to be up there all alone because you're afraid of some stairs."

Nathan just whined, and though there was the sound of a cry, they'd all learned his particular pleas and manipulations by now to know there was no measure of real sadness there, just an attempt at getting his way.

"Mommy," he called again to tug on her heartstrings.

"Will you at least hold my hand and try it?"

He was vehement in his denial of the scenario. "No. No, no. No."

"Come down on your butt then, like you did when you were a baby."

" _No_ ," he responded, this time louder and firmer, and then tried another tactic. "Papa?" Nathan yelled, searching the home for Garrus.

Kaidan smiled as he sipped his coffee. All his son's difficult behavior aside—and boy, the kid came with a lot—he marveled at the way his personality had formed as time passed. He had interests: songs he favored, even sung along to in his own tone deaf nonsense language whenever he heard them; toys and objects he couldn't live without; mannerisms he'd inherited by biology or through learning them from his parents; even a preference for the order in which he ate the pieces of food on his plate. How so much personality could be packed into a child of that size, he didn't know, and all the more he regretted spending so much time away from Earth.

"What if I told you I had a surprise for you?"

There was no immediate answer from Nathan that time, likely considering the question and how to reply with his limited vocabulary. Kate took a step back, just far enough to see into the kitchen, motioning a hand in Kaidan's direction. He set his mug down, and with a smile that wouldn't easily leave his face, he stepped into the hallway and approached the foot of the stairs.

"Hey buddy. You gonna' come downstairs and say hello?"

It was hard to leave Earth behind—dare he say even harder than it had been when the Reapers had arrived and the planet was in jeopardy—because of the son he left there. He was in good hands—Kate had done a remarkable job, and Garrus, too, when he wasn't off-world and working for the hierarchy, but regardless, it was hard to say goodbye to Nathan, especially as he grew older and wiser and began to understand his father's absence. When he was a baby, it had been a kiss to his son's cheek and off he went with the hope he could return before Nathan had grown far too much, but now their farewells usually involved tears from both of them, and desperate little begging requests that his father stay, or at the very least, take him with him. It was tempting, even if the boy wouldn't have made it ten miles from home before crying for his mother, but somehow the light on Nathan's face at seeing his father return made the pain almost worth it.

The toddler's expression was just that, one of joy and delight. No doubt that Kate had told him all about when his dad was expected to come home, but he knew all too well that reminders like that, especially with measures of time, tended to barely make an impression upon his young mind. Christmas, that's what it was like. Like every time Kaidan came home it was Christmas.

Nathan didn't move, just excitedly stomped his bare feet like he was walking in place, even bounced on his knees while holding onto the railing at the top of the stairs. He reached a single hand out towards Kaidan. "Daddy, get me down," he ordered, and though his understanding of language had grown, his words were still a mumbled mess, but a mess that they were all used to deciphering, at least.

"What if I meet you half way?"

" _Down_ , Daddy."

He wanted to stick to Kate's plan, wanted to try to convince the boy to not be so afraid after such a small fall, but the kid knew how to play his cards and after his absence—only seeing one another in their routine vidcomms every other night—Kaidan was a sap. He jogged up the stairs like they were nothing, and when his little boy raised his hands skyward, Kaidan had him in his arms, kissing at the crown of his head while Nathan pawed at him all over, from the stubble of his beard to the collar of his shirt, even the lobes of his ears.

"I missed you too," Kaidan breathed the words quietly against the shoulder of his son's brightly colored pajama set.

Back on the ground floor, Kate couldn't stay out of the middle of it and joined in, kissing Nathan's cheek and receiving one immediately in return, as per their morning ritual.

"What about Daddy?" She prompted, more so than asked.

Nathan shook his head in a shy, guilty expression and then immediately went in for the kill, leaving a sloppy kiss to the middle of Kaidan's cheek. It was unskilled, and in the right light there was even the glistening remains of saliva left to mark its place, but his father didn't wipe it away.

Kaidan beamed with pride. "That's my boy."

"Pancakes?" Nathan said, already distracted, and looked back to his mother expectantly.

Her eyes rolled, shoulders slumping. "Guess we have to make them now. Hey baby, why don't you go ask Papa if he'll help you make breakfast for us? You're so good at mixing the batter, aren't you?"

"I _heard_ that," Garrus halfheartedly protested while the rest of them returned to the kitchen. Kate tucked herself into his side apologetically, arm curling behind his waist. "Thanks for volunteering me."

"You love it," she argued, rolling up onto the balls of her feet to lay a kiss to his mandible, tame and reserved which was par for the course when they weren't alone. "Now get cooking. I'm hungry."

"You just going to stand here and watch?"

"Mm, Kaidan and I are going to have coffee on the porch."

"We are?" He looked up from where Nathan was pulling at his tiny shirt, showing off the character printed there to his dad.

"Yeah, now hand the kid over, grab your cup, and pray we still have some maple syrup so you don't implode if we make you use the fake stuff."

"I find it hard to believe," he scoffed, and only put Nathan down when the boy patted at his arm hurriedly, "you could find that imitation garbage anywhere within five hundred miles of here."

Kate abandoned Garrus' side to lead Kaidan by the elbow, her own mug in the other hand. "That's right, keep talking, let the rage flow through you right outside. And you two—" she turned sharply at the last minute, "behave."

But Garrus and Nathan were already lost to her, the boy perched on the counter's edge kicking his legs out and letting them fall back into the cabinet door below. Excitedly, he mimed the action of mixing an imaginary spoon into the empty glass bowl Garrus had already set out. They were laughing together about something, Garrus stopping to tickle the boy's neck and sides with his blunted talons and fingertips, and Nathan responding with shrieking giggles, squirming where he sat as he tried to avoid the gentle torture.

"Okay, okay," she heard Garrus say and saw him lift his hands to give up, and just when Nate was breathing easy, he dove back in, returning to the previous small thrill. Breakfast would be ready in two hours at this rate, but the growl in her stomach would have to cope with it. She wouldn't bother the two of them for anything in the world.

Kaidan had taken the initiative to continue on out the front door by time Kate looked back to him, and when she caught up he'd already found a comfortable seat in one of the chairs on the covered porch.

"I used to play out here when I was little," he said.

"Yeah? I thought your parents didn't get this place until you were a teenager."

"They didn't," he clarified, "but it's been in the family forever. It was my grandparents' place, and whenever my dad returned to extended service, Mom and I usually came out here. I used to think she did it to give me a distraction from him being gone, but I think she needed it too."

He was probably right, Kate knew from having gotten to know his folks over the last two years. They were very much a unit, people that functioned best with the other, and she knew now firsthand as a mother how hard it was to be alone sometimes when both Kaidan and Garrus were gone at overlapping intervals. Kaidan's mother had more than once dropped by to give her and Nathan the much appreciated company during those times.

"What'd you want to talk about?"

Kate leaned her hip into the railing, her back against one of the supporting posts. "Maybe I just wanted to avoid cooking and clean-up."

"Maybe," he nodded, "but I know you better than that."

She smiled to herself, looking out over the stretch of fields that spread out for acres surrounding the main home. Some—most of it—was occupied with apple trees of varying types of the fruit coming in all kinds of mixtures of tartness and sweetness, while the rest was partitioned into hunks of land laid out for other crops that were in season or already long harvested in more ideal temperatures. Behind the home there was even the small greenhouse, the one they'd set up the year before and with much care, that now delivered to them a small yield of dextro crops. Not enough to sustain Garrus completely, but a pet project Kate maintained separate of the rest of the plant matter that was sold to feed the local areas.

"You think maybe you could watch Nathan for a few days?" she finally asked.

"Of course," he answered. "I wouldn't worry about me, just about how he's going to handle being away from you."

That was a concern of hers as well. Save for the odd night here and there, mother and son were yet to be separated. It would be quite the test.

"Where are you going?"

"Palaven, I think."

Kaidan lifted his head right away. "You and Garrus—you going to finally get married—bonded? Whatever they call it there."

A shake of her head dismissed the idea. "We're a long way off from that, if ever. Just thought it was finally time to actually, you know, meet his family, and it's not exactly the best place to bring a kid. Even if Nathan were to wear a suit—"

"The radiation, I know. Not worth the risk of exposing him to it. When were you thinking of going?"

"Soon, I guess, if you're going to be here. We've kind of just been waiting for the chance."

Kaidan set his cup on the small end table between his chair and the next. "I think I can manage him on my own for a few days."

"That's what you think," she teased, but the smile she wore fell away not too much later. Her lips pursed, the rest of her face tense.

"I can tell you're thinking about something—just spit it out."

"You still seeing that guy? The nurse?"

A twitchy, nervous hand was drawn to the back of his neck, scratching the hair and skin there as he avoided her gaze. "Yeah," he coughed. "From time to time."

"You can bring him here, you know."

"What?"

"I know the situation we've got set up here is… a little unconventional. Me, Garrus, Nathan, you whenever you feel like popping in. Your parents showing up from time to time. But it's our home, you know? All of us. And Nate's your son—if someone's important to you, and you want to, I mean, you should bring them home to meet him."

His cheeks burned so hot he was sure his skin was bright red, embarrassment apparent on his face. "I'm just… not sure how serious it is, is all."

Kate nodded to herself, but it was the knowing kind of look that revealed she understood more than he gave away in his outward words. "It's okay to move on."

Kaidan didn't even glance up. That heat was replaced with a chill, a shiver down his spine. "Yeah. I know."

"No, I don't think you do."

"It's just—"

"I never told anyone this, but after the Citadel, sometime between when things went to hell and I woke up, I saw Shepard."

That drew a sharp response out of him, his head shooting up to regard her.

"I don't know if I was dreaming or having a moment of psychosis or if it was really her or _what_ ," she said defensively. "But I was back on Mindoir with Shepard, back on the farm our parents had. She told me I had to come back, that it wasn't my time yet. And she said… Shepard said she missed you."

Had it been anyone else saying such a thing, the confession wouldn't have held any weight at all. Life after death, that wasn't something he truly believed in. Maybe it was something he hoped was real for the selfish reason of wanting to see Shepard again, but whether he truly believed in it or not… that was something he wouldn't ever understand until after his life had come to an end. For Kate to say it, though, especially after holding onto it as a private memory for so long—he had to admit, it had meaning he couldn't quantify.

"And she wouldn't want you to waste your life waiting for her. She'd be pissed, in fact."

A stunted laugh was caught in his throat. "Sounds like her."

"So be happy, Kaidan. And don't hold back on her account or mine or Nathan's. We're your family, you'll have us no matter what."

Though he wasn't able to manage it on the sly, Kaidan wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with the side of his hand, blinking away the rest. Shepard. He missed her so much. But the things he had gained in her absence—this family Kate spoke of—it made it a little easier.

Kate came forward, brushing her fingertips across his cheekbone. "Now come on. You've got to be hungry."

They went back inside, and all together, the four of them shared breakfast.


End file.
